Annette Sharp: Tziporah Malkah caught up in top cop PR scandal

Tziporah Malkah is dismayed she’s been dragged into the drama surrounding the NSW Police Commissioner’s new media chief, telling Annette Sharp: ‘I’m just low-hanging fruit, easy to knock to the ground.’

Former model Tziporah Malkah is frustrated she has been drawn back into a drama she had long put behind her.

Malkah, formerly the fashion model, actor and television personality known as Kate Fisher, has been named in reports about a night of partying with the man now in line to become NSW Police’s new media chief.

Photographs of Malkah with journalist and TV producer Steve Jackson taken on a drunken Christmas Eve in 2019 were published this week.

There are reportedly other photographs from the same night being circulated, which show her in a bewildered semi-naked state on a couch with Jackson.

Malkah said the existence of the photographs, taken in her own home, came as a surprise when asked about them on Friday. Malkah admits now she was “at her lowest ebb” at the time.

Former model and actor Tziporah Malkah is horrified she has been dragged into a scandal around topless shots. Picture: Damian Shaw

She suspects they were taken by a second man, not Jackson, who was also at her apartment that night, one she mistook for a trusted friend, who had introduced her to Jackson, who is a former employee of The Sunday Telegraph and The Daily Telegraph.

“That (one) man has chosen to use these pictures to smear another man — with total disregard to my privacy, consent or feeling, further emphasises the point that I’ve previously made of how men in all spheres of life … appear to treat women as disposable objects,” Malkah said.

Malkah at the Downing Centre Court complex in 2020. Picture: Joel Carrett

“How is it that this is still happening?

“That I am being dragged into some war that currently has no bearing on my life, because when men go to war they don’t care about what is used as ammunition?

“If it happens to be a woman, who was down on her luck at the time and can be used to throw a bit of tarnish on a man’s reputation, so be it.

“The core issue here is consent and the sexual objectification of women and the removal of our voice and our rights.”

Four years after the photographs were taken — and after Malkah’s heartbreaking decline made headlines — the one-time media darling, now 50, is three years into a recovery and sounding like a woman who has reclaimed her voice and her power.

Following her last memorable stint on reality television in 2017 on Channel 10’s I’m A Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here, Malkah worked in aged care, at a women’s refuge and as a traffic cop while attempting to unravel the “co-dependency issues” she today says have plagued her.

Malkah, then known as Kate Fisher, with her fiance James Packer in 1996.

She reserves her highest praise for a court-nominated NSW domestic violence and narcissistic abuse counsellor Juliette Ferrier, who she has been seeing since October 2020 and who Malkah credits with helping her turn her life around after being exploited by “everyone”.

Having abandoned her OnlyFans account around the same time, she is now an advocate for women’s rights and works for Fair Game Australia.

Malkah said a key difficulty for her today is that she is no longer “protected” as she once was.

“I’m not employed by a corporate entity. I’m not married. I really haven’t any protection these days,” she said.

“I haven’t always kept my private life private, so setting up those boundaries can be hard retrospectively, but what gets me is that people doing far worse things than I’ve ever done get away with it while I get away with nothing because I’m recognised.

“I’m just low-hanging fruit, easy to knock to the ground.

“This Jackson story is not about me, it’s about men behaving badly.”

In an attempt to give context to the 2019 night in question she added: “This wasn’t a party with any sexual element – despite any other activities that may lead anyone to believe otherwise.

“It was simply a hot night and I chose to do what many enlightened women do on a hot night, which was not to wear a top in their own home … with the expectation of privacy.”

Got a news tip? Email [e-mail]