"Poofter" is the Australian equivalent of the American "faggot". It is quite a common insult to call someone a poofter:
"The publisher of a small north Queensland newspaper and an elderly correspondent who wrote a letter headlined "Poofters Beware" yesterday made legal history. Mission Beach Advertiser publisher Michael Wilks and 73-year-old Ross Woodley have became the first people to be prosecuted by Queensland's Anti-Discrimination Tribunal on the basis of a complaint brought by an organisation, rather than an individual.
The tribunal found Wilks, 63, and Woodley guilty of vilification and ordered them to acknowledge homosexuals were important to north Queensland's tourism economy and should be welcomed to the area.
The pair has also been stuck with substantial legal fees and will be forced to publish apologies after the November 2003 edition of the paper carried Mr Woodley's letter, in which he falsely claimed men had been engaging in sexual acts at nearby Garners Beach and vigilantes were planning violence against them.
Source
