Antoinette Lattouf, ABC unfair dismissal case begins

Ita Buttrose pushed for Antoinette Lattouf to be taken off-air, asking why she could not “come down with flu, or COVID or a stomach upset?” after receiving a tranche of complaints about her presence as a fill-in presenter on ABC Radio Sydney.

The then-chair of the ABC said, “We owe her nothing”, in correspondence aired in the Federal Court on Monday morning. Buttrose departed the ABC in March last year after one term as chair.

“We’re copping criticism because she [Lattouf] wasn’t honest when she was appointed,” Buttrose said in her correspondence, according to Lattouf’s barrister Oshie Fagir.

The correspondence was revealed in the opening statements made by Fagir as the high-profile case began in front of a packed courtroom on Monday morning, in which Lattouf is arguing she was unlawfully terminated.

ABC’s outgoing managing director David Anderson also received complaints from what Fagir described as pro-Israel lobbyists, then telling the network’s content chief Chris Oliver-Taylor, “I think we have an Antoinette issue”, and that her social media accounts were “full of antisemitic hatred”, the court was told.

The ABC’s top editorial expert, Simon Melkman, had argued that Lattouf had done nothing wrong and that the complaints were “seriously misguided”, with editorial codes applying to content broadcast rather than assessing the people the ABC hired.

The ABC’s most senior executives were sympathetic to and “embraced” the views expressed by the pro-Israeli lobby and the anti-Lattouf campaigners, Fagir argued in his opening statement.

He added that members of the lobby group Lawyers for Israel had conducted a “spectacularly successful campaign” to have her taken off-air, including a “barrage of complaints” sent to both Anderson and Buttrose.

The names of anyone who complained directly to the ABC, chair and managing director about Lattouf’s employment were suppressed ahead of the trial on Monday morning.