The review recommends a raft of reforms be considered including a UK-style serious harm test, which is designed to weed out trivial claims before parties proceed to the expense of a trial. Sydney barrister Matthew Lewis, who appears regularly in defamation cases, said this recommendation was "encouraging" and the courts were "increasingly having to contend with trivial claims" where the time and costs involved were "wholly disproportionate to the interests at stake". "There are some famous examples where despite minimal stakes the costs of defending the case all the way to the High Court have exceeded $1 million," he said. Mr Lewis said recommendations about revisiting the existing defence of "innocent dissemination" and considering new "safe harbour" provisions - to help shield internet intermediaries including search engines from liability for third parties' content - were also welcome. The review also recommends consideration of a "single publication" rule, aimed at sidestepping the present problem of online publications being treated as a new publication each time they are downloaded.

Treating each download as a new publication has meant the one-year time limit on bringing a defamation claim re-starts each time the material is accessed online. The review also explores changes unrelated to technology, including potentially re-visiting existing restrictions on the ability of large corporations to sue for defamation. Any relaxation of this restriction would be opposed by media outlets. However, media defendants would welcome proposed changes to highly technical defences, such as qualified privilege and contextual truth, which are notoriously difficult to establish. Associate Professor Jason Bosland, deputy director of the Centre for Media and Communications Law at Melbourne Law School, said Australia had "some of the most draconian defamation provisions anywhere in the world" and they were "in desperate need of reform". However, he cautioned against "tinkering around the edges" and said wholesale reform was required including an examination of procedural aspects of the law.

The timing of the review also appeared problematic, Associate Professor Bosland said. The NSW government called in 2011 for submissions to inform a statutory-mandated review of the Defamation Act, due to report by January 2012. The Berejiklian government did not ask participants to update those submissions in light of technological and legal developments before releasing the long-overdue report on Thursday. Associate Professor Bosland said the Law Commission of Ontario's review of defamation laws in the internet age, which started in 2015 and will report next year, was the "best example of how a review should be conducted". It is understood further consultation with stakeholders is likely to be undertaken by the states and territories. A five-year review of Australian defamation cases covering 2013-17, released in March by the Centre for Media Transition at the University of Technology, Sydney, found 51.3 per cent of the 189 cases involved digital publications such as tweets, emails, Facebook posts and news websites.