ABC denies it edited interview to appease disgraced Labor MLA

DISGRACED Labor MLA Mark Turner asked the woman he was having an affair with to request a portion of a pre-recorded ABC interview she did be cut before going to air. The ABC denies it did so to appease the Labor MLA.

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DISGRACED Blain MLA Mark Turner asked the woman he was having an affair with to request a portion of a pre-recorded ABC interview she did be cut before going to air, with the ABC agreeing to do so, text messages have revealed.

As first reported by the NT Independent, text messages reveal Mr Turner was aware of an interview with ABC Radio Darwin host Jo Laverty and the woman on February 17 where she discussed her and Mr Turner’s relationship.

The NT News has also seen the messages in question, which reveal that Mr Turner was sent a snippet of the interview before it went to air and asked for part of it to be cut.

“I’d ask Jo to get rid of the consent stuff and sex stuff as it’ll get twisted,” Mr Turner wrote to the woman upon being sent a snippet of the conversation before it aired.

“Do you agree, like I’ve said before it needs to be team work,” Mr Turner wrote.

“Yes and she (Ms Laverty) said yes to that,” the woman responded.

The woman said she didn’t “blab that on air.”

“That was two girlfriends chatting. I didn’t know she was recording. She’s gonna take it out now,” the woman wrote to Mr Turner.

The woman then sent him a Facebook Messenger message via SMS from “Jolene Audrey”, understood to be Jo Laverty, who had written: “Done, it’s out”.

“She cut it,” the woman told Mr Turner.

The ABC denied to the NT Independent that the interview was edited at the request of the “subject”.

“Any suggestion that Ms Laverty allowed the subject of the interview to make edits to the interview before it aired is wrong,” ABC Regional and Local spokesman John Woodward told the website.

In a statement to the NT News on Monday afternoon, an ABC spokesman said: “We refute the assertion made by the NT Independent that the ABC altered an interview at Labor MLA’s request.”

“There were no changes to the recorded interview in question, other than the usual editing undertaken by the ABC Radio Darwin team on all pre-recorded interviews,” the spokesman said.

“A few comments were recorded in the preamble to the interview, which, on reflection, the Breakfast presenter, Ms Laverty wanted to include.

“She went back to the subject of the interview seeking permission to do so. Permission was not given.”

The text messages also show Mr Turner asked the woman to delete the audio of the interview segment she had sent him via his official MLA Facebook page before his staffers saw it.

“Can you delete that audio from the facebooks (sic) before the staff wake up and grab it?” he asked. “Not sure how to do the unsend messages.”

He then sought the woman’s approval to say “nothing inappropriate has happened”.

“Are you happy for me to go down the route of nothing inappropriate has happened it’s a hit job, we’ve done nothing illegal and unfortunately it’s internet gossip that’s been weaponised with what appears to be altered information to try and make it’s (sic) something it’s not,” Mr Turner asked the woman.

Mr Turner also expressed his concern about the possible damage to the “poly(amory)/non-binary community” as a result of the affair becoming public.

Senior Labor staffer Kent Rowe was also mentioned in the text exchange.

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