It pays to think before you hit send

Please look at your text messages right now.

I suggest this because of what happened to failed Prime Minister Scott Morrison at the National Press Club on Wednesday. A controversial political correspondent revealed he'd received screenshots of private text messages between former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and a federal cabinet minister whose privacy was protected (must be an excellent source to get that special benefit). The topic of those texts was the Prime Minister. Berejiklian is alleged to have texted that the Prime Minister was a "horrible, horrible person". Actually, that is entirely believable. It sounds like something the onerously courteous Berejiklian would say. I can even hear her voice saying it.

I'm not so convinced describing Morrison as a complete psycho is quite as believable. Shill? Sure. Lazy bastard? Most definitely. Complete failure as a prime minister? Start a petition and I'll sign my name to it. Most underworked prime minister in living memory? I can't remember any other prime minister who wouldn't hold a hose, either at a fire or a petrol pump.

No matter. I'm confident there are worse things said about Morrison in the text messages of the voting public. Yes, we are so awful in our texting. I've just looked in mine and seriously, I'm blushing. There is, I confess, quite a lot of bad language. A lot. The F word in copious quantities - past tense, present tense, the future continuous. The word which begins with "sh" which is no longer considered bad language. There is definitely serial unkindness. However, there is not the word "psycho" in any real modern sense. It appears in reference to Hitchcock's shower scene, as part of the word psychologist and, used by my children, to be extremely impolite to their ageing mother. "Bitch" appears mostly as a verb. There is, I am embarrassed to confess, the occasional C word.

Does it really matter what you say via text? Strange you should ask. Defamation lawyer Sue Chrysanthou has some advice for all of us.

"Before you put anything in writing, think about how it will sound when it is read out in open court to a judge," she says.

Actually, I'm pretty sure she really meant: How will it sound when it's read out at the National Press Club?

Dear god. What a terrifying thought. She says that's a general lawyer rule for anything, really: Messenger, emails, texts in whatever form you send them in (although messaging service Signal now has this handy setting where messages disappear after a certain period of time. Doesn't stop the screenshotters, but gives some comfort).

But the good news is that mostly these texts we send each other are not defamation. The test for defamation is that the words lower the subject's reputation in the minds of ordinary people, says Chrysanthou.

"If you just use foul language, call someone an arsehole or a dickhead, that's not considered to be defamatory in most contexts," she explains.

This is such a relief, because those are words which regularly appear in my text messages. [Feeling superior? I urge you to do a quick word search among your own messages, just as the former premier of NSW must have done when looking for the world "horrible". A gentle reminder: Berejiklian did not deny sending the texts, but said she had "no recollection of such messages" and insisted Mr Morrison had her "very strong support". Isn't it funny when weak and strong mean the same thing?]

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What's it called when you describe your boss as a psycho, something I should have done, because some of my former bosses were genuinely deranged?

It's vulgar abuse, says Chrysanthou. Just perfect. Those messages are just intended for your friends and colleagues. Just general watercooler chat - pub talk - but transcribed for ease of transmission. Probably not so good to send in a group chat, because messages leak. [I once was sent an appalling message about me. Rather than shoot the messenger, I decided to confront her. It was fun.]

But probably the very worst thing about these texts is that they exist forever. A friend has her torrid affair, now 10 years in the past, in gruelling detail on her phone. I hope her current never finds it. And even if you've deleted them on your phone, you know that they exist elsewhere, able to be used as ammunition at least two years after you sent them. If these messages read out by Peter van Onselen are as described, they were sent during the 2019 bushfires. I wonder if he's held on to them that long, or whether the troublemaker is out to cause chaos in the run-up to the election?

The other problem is when we out ourselves: the woman who meant to send sexts to her husband but instead sent them to her daughter; the bloke who put all his grievances about his boss to his boss; darling Kerri Sackville who sent her text message about a horrible person to the horrible person.

We send messages to the wrong people all the time. In the US right now, there's a fascinating court case taking place, seemingly triggered when NFL coach Bill Belichick sent a message congratulating former protégé Brian Flores on his appointment to the famous New York Giants, before the job interview had even happened. Turns out he sent the message to the wrong Brian. Now Flores is using those text messages as part of a class-action lawsuit.

Sounds about as bad as the Prime Minister discovering one of his colleagues despises him. Actually, he'd be bloody lucky if it's only one.