Former ABC chair Ita Buttrose has told a Sydney court she believed journalist Antoinette Lattouf was an activist when handling complaints about her in 2023. As Lattouf's unlawful termination case nears its final stages, the ABC has altered part of its defence, while its lawyers were rebuked by the judge over a separate matter.
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00:00The judge has already seen some of her emails, today he heard directly from Ita Butros.
00:08She was quizzed about her view in December 2023, when Antoinette Latouf's five-day
00:13radio presenting contract triggered complaints to senior ABC figures.
00:18I think in relation to the Israel-Gaza conflict, she was an activist.
00:22Her view, one way or the other, was not my concern.
00:25My concern was that we were not being impartial.
00:28Ms Latouf was taken off air after sharing this Human Rights Watch post, and she alleges
00:33political opinion and or race was the reason, which the ABC denies.
00:38Before that happened, Ms Butros emailed Managing Director David Anderson, asking if she'd
00:44been replaced.
00:45Why can't she come down with flu or COVID?
00:47A stomach upset, she wrote.
00:50Today in court, she said, that was just a face-saving idea, I thought it might have
00:54been an idea for Antoinette.
00:56She said she thought Ms Latouf was finishing her contract, with protections in place.
01:01That seemed to be the perfect solution to me.
01:04After you had found out she had been dismissed, you were happy with that outcome.
01:07I was shocked.
01:08Ms Butros, is there anything you would do differently?
01:11Ms Butros denied that she put pressure on anybody.
01:14No comment.
01:16Last week, the judge suppressed the identities of the complaint authors.
01:20But yesterday, names, email addresses and phone numbers were briefly published in this
01:25affidavit on the court's public website.
01:27I am deeply unhappy about the error made by the ABC's legal representatives.
01:32The ABC's counsel apologised for what he called a mistake purely of human error.
01:38Part of the ABC's defence had previously pressed for evidence that a Lebanese, Middle Eastern
01:43or Arab race exists in the legal sense.
01:46Today, the broadcaster's lawyers conceded that he's not in dispute, and also accepted
01:51Ms Latouf has one or more of those national extractions.