The exemption provision in section 18D relevantly provided:[3] "Section 18C does not render unlawful anything said or done reasonably and in good faith: Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that the two articles authored by Bolt conveyed the following imputations:[1] Justice Bromberg found that it was reasonably likely that an ordinary person within the group of fair-skinned Aboriginal persons would have been offended and insulted by the newspaper articles, in particular the challenge to the legitimacy of the identity of those individuals and the concentration on skin colour as the defining determinant of racial identity.

In addition, Justice Bromberg found that it was reasonably likely that Eatock would be "humiliated and intimidated by her perception of the capacity of the articles to generate negative or confronting attitudes to her from others".

[5] Bolt himself described the decision as a "terrible day for free speech" in Australia and said it represented "a restriction on the freedom of all Australians to discuss multiculturalism and how people identify themselves.

Andrew Dodd, a former presenter of the ABC TV's Media Report program, described the decision as "a slap in the face for freedom of expression... because I think it does curtail the extent to which we are able to talk freely about issues that are difficult to discuss, which may have a public interest component, and which concern minority groups."

[7] The ABC's Jonathan Holmes of Media Watch described Justice Bromberg's interpretation of the RDA, and his application of it to Bolt's columns, as "profoundly disturbing" because it reinforced concerns that section 18C creates "one particular area of public life where speech is regulated by tests that simply don't apply anywhere else, and in which judges - never, for all their pontifications, friends of free speech - get to do the regulating".