On Friday the parties appeared in the Federal Court in Sydney for the first preliminary hearing in the dispute before Justice Steven Rares. Ms Husar claims the publications convey a range of false and defamatory imputations about her, including that she is "a slut who boasts about who she has had sex with, which includes other Members of Parliament and members of her staff". Loading Barrister Tim Senior, appearing for BuzzFeed, argued on Friday that "the word slut is imprecise" and the imputation as pleaded by Ms Husar's legal team should be struck out. Mr Senior said BuzzFeed had not used the word "slut" in the article and the allegation it had made was not that Ms Husar had indiscriminate sex but that she had allegedly discussed in the office who she had slept with or would like to sleep with, with reference to MPs or staff members.

“The vice in that conduct is that it’s occurring in the workplace and she’s talking about people she’s slept with who are MPs or staff members who are known to the staff," Mr Senior said. “It’s not a quantitative issue, it’s the fact she’s saying ‘I’ve slept with this person’.” Loading But Justice Rares noted the article reported in its first paragraph that Ms Husar "bragged about who she was having sex with ... according to allegations". He said the "fairly salacious" article "seems eminently capable" of conveying to readers the imputation as pleaded by Ms Husar's lawyers.

Justice Rares said that according to his "old-fashioned" understanding of the term, "slut" meant a person who engaged in casual sexual encounters without any emotional attachment. He said the article sounded "very much" like it was alleging Ms Husar had boasted about "sleep[ing] around" and said the imputation should not be struck out. Loading Allowing the imputation to remain in Ms Husar's statement of claim means BuzzFeed will either have to prove the allegation is true – known as the defence of justification – or rely on a range of highly technical defences, including qualified privilege. Qualified privilege relates to publications on matters of public interest and requires media outlets to convince the judge they acted reasonably. It is notoriously difficult for media outlets to establish.

"The fact that it may be difficult to justify [the imputation] only goes to show that you might have thought about what you did before you published it," Justice Rares told BuzzFeed's barrister. Ms Husar's barrister, prominent defamation silk Sandy Dawson, SC, successfully applied for BuzzFeed to pay the Labor MP's costs of the hearing on Friday. Ms Husar sees the case against Buzzfeed as part of a broader campaign to clear her name since she first learned complaints had been made against her by then-unnamed members of her staff. In documents filed in court, Ms Husar's lawyers say the August 2 article suggests she is "sexually perverted in that ... she repeatedly exposed her vagina to her Parliamentary colleague Jason Clare in his Parliamentary office in the presence of his son and one of her staff". This imputation is drawn from an allegation in the story that Ms Husar had been accused by an unnamed staff member of performing "the revealing leg-crossing move made famous by Sharon Stone in the film Basic Instinct in front of a Labor frontbencher".

Ms Husar and Mr Clare vehemently rejected these claims. Barrister John Whelan, an independent assessor appointed by NSW Labor to investigate a number of allegations made against Ms Husar by staff members, advised senior party officials on August 10 that allegations of "lewd conduct" in Mr Clare's office were not supported. He has also cleared Ms Husar of allegations of sexual harassment by a former staff member, saying that these, too, were not supported "on the balance of probabilities". Mr Whelan said the leaking of the allegations against Ms Husar had been "reprehensible". Ms Husar's action is the second Federal Court defamation case launched against BuzzFeed in Australia, putting pressure on the publisher's local arm. On October 12, NSW Liberal Party donor and president of its Bella Vista branch, Rudy Limantono, filed defamation proceedings against BuzzFeed Australia, its American parent company and Ms Workman over two articles published on September 25 and 26.