Are you arguing to change the law for false imprisonment and torture? Or do you just want to let those laws slide?

Being a member of a fundamentalist group that kills for religion is not illegal either. We tried that once with Tim Anderson and the Ananda Margas after the Hilton Bombing.

And we found them innocent. All evidence now points to the police doing the bombing.

Bolt and Jones do not just express opinions. In Jones’ case, his opinions are exchanged for cash. In Bolt’s case, his opinions are exchanged for influence. Both have been caught expressing opinions they knew weren’t true. Both have been caught saying the same fib, over and over, in what can only be called a media campaign.

Bolt famously said the Stolen Generation never happened. He demanded names, and when he was given them, he pretended they didn’t exist. He used his column in the widest read Australian newspaper to claim that no Aboriginal children had ever - ever - been forcibly removed from their parents. This followed the Bringing Them Home report, which, as everybody knows, proved that they were.

Bolt wasn’t expressing an opinion. He was knowingly spreading a lie. Jones does exactly the same. Such hubris can only be possible when you believe that your audience are chumps.

The thing is though, Mistie, with fibs on that scale, the truth usually come out in the end. Tim Anderson got off, David Hicks was released, and Bolt and Jones have no credibility left.

And this is why we don’t arrest, torture or kill people based on lies: the truth comes back to get us.