It seems accusations & allegations are the lastest go-to cudgel to blunten the nose of one's opponents. Made worse the preferred forum to regulalry air claims is primarily the Court of the Public Square...media, social media. We've seen it time & time again and it does have some history prior to the rise of Social Media.
Parliamentary Privelege.
The old classic I heard as a kid growing up was (paraphrased) "If you're not going to write it, sign it, stand behind it in court...don't say it"
That's gone. Long gone. The usual idea of pursuing a matter via due process, ala natural justice where everyone is considered innocent until proven otherwise is falling away.
Now you can sully a person's reputation, damage or destroy a person's standing or career by flying an allegation publicly & reissue it regularly long after it's met its furtherest point. Now if someone is convicted by a court, then it seems pursuit is over and the convicted person has to live with the result or appeal but the personal pursuit is largely over. It seems now if the accuser is dead or has no way to prove their claim beyond one person's word against another then the accusation can linger. Once it might have lingered as a cloud above them, now it's blunt instrument to pummel the accused forever more. Reactivate regularly apparently. We've seen a handful of high profile cases that fit this criteria very easily. You've seen them and some appear to have no possible likelihood of a legitimate outcome via natural justice.
As a result it seems the only outcome now is to continue "un-natural justice" to pursue the person accused until they are removed from whatever position they hold. Until their name & reputation are destroyed and they are no longer seen publicly again.
This truly is akin to mob rule with lit torches & pitch forks storming the town square preparing for a lynching outside the legal system.
This is made worse by a recent incident of late where some MPs of varying stripes have deciding to not only fail to condemn this mob rule tactic but worse still, partake in it. This is not the hill they should decide to die on. They ought to be careful using or supporting others using Parliamentary Privilege to target another without any legal ramifications. They should never with good conscience decided to side step due process and proper justice. Unfortunately this part of the Parliament has been weaponised over the decades & it will be again. Worse is the Machivellean types who roam the halls of power & will argue this is a fine thing to do. Next election, vote them out.
Anyone pushing weaponised allegations is not to be trusted, especially if they pursue the destruction of a person without using a proper legal method. I saw one person in the Social Media who was taken to task over their use of an allegation. They were told to use the courts, that you cannot constantly hound a person with an unproven allegation.
The reply was perplexing...
1) The accussor is their friend, they will not back down
2) The only legal course of action at hand is a civil action which is costly, complex and difficult to win
3) The only option left was to raise awareness
Firstly, friendship is not a part of legal process, guilt beyond reasonable doubt is the only legal option for a reason.
Second, it probably is true that a civil case is very difficult. That is a likely fact, not a reason or excuse to pursue a person outside the proper process of Australian Law.
Third, I think the awareness on the several cases (4 I can think of) is very great already. I think some see "awareness" as code for constant weaponised attacks on a person outside any legal process.
No one wants anyone off the hook, but you cannot subvert proper due process, deny someone proper natural justice nor in any way condemn them without their day in court.
The reason? Its so innocent people aren't condemned and reputations wrongly destroyed.
Will some guilty people get away with something? Its possible but if we cannot have a dirty & unclean tactic of knifing someone without proper defence as being in anyway acceptable
Anyone exercising, supporting, not publicly opposing this sort of weaponsed character assassination is unlikely to be a fit & proper person within parliament, a board, a place of great responsibility and probably belongs in a violent communist hate group like Antifa
For those seeking a preferred scalp, please ask the accusor to take it to the authorities.
It is their business afterall.
If they don't & you somehow decide to keep in pursuit, I think your best bet is to make details public.
I think if you're not prepared to take the matter to court, someone else soon will.
Of course it may well be that some have political motives. In any case it still comes down to and returns us to that earlier advice...
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