Former federal Labor MP Mike Kelly’s legal costs are mounting after he suffered another preliminary setback today in his long-running stoush with Liberal Party pollsters Lynton Crosby and Mark Textor.

The pollsters are suing Kelly for defamation over a Twitter post that accused them of “push polling”.

Federal Court judge Steven Rares today refused to allow most of the amendments Dr Kelly was seeking to make to his defence and forced him to wear the costs of the preliminary hearing.

The judge criticised the length of time taken to resolve the dispute — which Dr Kelly has tried, unsuccessfully, to take to the High Court — and which is now set to stretch into 2015.

“This is about a tweet to about 1000 people or something... and it’s now bigger than Ben Hur,” Justice Rares said.

The tweet, posted in October 2011, said: “always grate (sic) to hear moralising from Crosby, Textor, Steal & Gnash. The mob who introduced push polling to Aus”.

Mr Crosby and Mr Textor initially sought an apology and retraction from Dr Kelly but when this was not forthcoming, they launched legal action in the Federal Court.

In their statement of claim, the pair said the tweet wrongly suggested they had introduced a polling technique that had the deceitful purpose of deliberately influencing voters with material slanted against the opposing candidate.

Dr Kelly, a former Minister for Defence Materiel and army legal officer, is defending the tweet on the basis that it is true.

He is also seeking to show that the pollsters are hypocrites — and if he is successful in showing this, he argues he will successfully knock out their claim under the defence of contextual truth, because it is more damaging to their reputation than any other alleged imputation.

However, Justice Rares today struck out large parts of Dr Kelly’s amended defence, including attempts to argue that particular election campaigns run by the pollsters — which included claims about law and order and the Tampa/children overboard affair — were hypocritical.

Dr Kelly’s barrister Bruce McClintock SC said as highly sophisticated political operatives, the pollsters could not possibly believe “guff” about tougher sentencing.

Justice Rares asked why he should infer that politicians and campaign directors didn’t believe in the “lunacy” of law-and-order campaigns.

“That’s the sort of nonsense they go on with, but that doesn’t mean they don’t believe in that nonsense,” Justice Rares said.