Crikey is having a defamation settlement conference in Adelaide on Friday, June 7, with Senator Nick Bolkus. As a gesture of goodwill ahead of this meeting, we once again publish the apology that was read by more people than saw the original item last year.

The content implied that in 1995 Senator Bolkus, when he was Justice Minister, had been driving his car whilst under the influence of alcohol, that the car crashed into a tree, and that the Senator was involved in covering up the official records of the accident to show that a sober staffer was driving.

We acknowledge that the statements we made are untrue. In particular we accept that Senator Bolkus, who at the relevant time was Immigration Minister, was not in 1995 or at any other time, a passenger or driver of his car when it was involved in a collision. We also accept that he has not been involved in any incident involving driving his car after having consumed alcohol. In particular, we unreservedly withdraw and retract the imputation that he was complicit in an attempt to “cover up” the fact that he was driving under the influence of alcohol by having the official records show that a sober staffer was driving at the time.

We have deleted the offending material from the website.

We unreservedly apologise to Senator Bolkus for the distress, harm and embarrassment caused to him by the imputations arising from the material published about him.

CRIKEY SUBSCRIBERS NIGHT IN ADELAIDE

We’ll hopefully have settled with Nick on Friday so why not come along to Crikey’s Adelaide pub night and make a donation to help cover our costs.

We’ll be gathering between 5.30pm and 8.30pm at Ngapartji, 211 Rundle St (opposite the Austral Hotel) on Friday afternoon.

You can subscribe on the night or just click on this link to subscribe for $66 and give us a hand in the face of this defamation action which has already cost us $2000 in legals and airfares.

Crikey has 3400 subscribers who get daily email updates totalling about 20,000 words but we’ll be phasing out the free tee-shirt from June 30 so get in while you can.