Last updated 10 November 2025

To bring a defamation action you must be a:

  • living person
  • not-for-profit corporation
  • corporation that employs fewer than 10 persons and that is not related to another corporation (ss 9, 10 Defamation Act 2005 (Qld)).

If you are a person or entity listed above, you can bring the action against any living person or a corporation, however, a large multinational corporation cannot bring a defamation action against an individual.

Generally, defaming a class or group of persons rather than a named individual is not enough to bring a defamation action, unless it is reasonably possible to infer the defamatory words refer to each and every member of the group. In Bjelke-Petersen v Warburton [1987] 2 Qd R 465, the leader and deputy leader of the opposition accused the government of corruption, referring to the ministers at the time as ‘blokes’ with ‘their hands in the till’. The words were found to be capable of referring to all 18 members of the government at the time. The small size of the group, generality and extravagance of the claims were all relevant in deciding that each minister had a valid cause of action.