ABC receives multiple complaints over podcast about Fine Cotton affair

The public broadcaster has received multiple complaints about its eight-episode series about one of Australia’s biggest sporting scandals.

David Waterhouse in 1995 after an AJC hearing. Picture: Warren Clarke

The ABC has been embroiled in another controversy over its coverage of historical Australian crimes and faces legal action over the newly released eight-episode podcast on the Fine Cotton affair.

Multiple complaints have been sent to the ABC since the podcast series, Dig – The Ring In, the first in the public broadcaster’s “investigative history feed”, was released on March 1, amid claims of significant inaccuracies about one of the nation’s biggest sporting scandals.

Among those who have made written complaints to the ABC is David Waterhouse — the estranged son of the late bookmaker Bill Waterhouse and brother of Robbie — over his ­portrayal in the podcast, which he said left him “deeply offended” and “defamed”.

“They’ve somersaulted me for no reason, they have been less than frank from the start,” he said.

A team of more than 40 people worked on the ABC podcast, included three fact checkers.

Mr Waterhouse told The Australian he had engaged lawyers and was seeking for episode 7 of the podcast to be amended.

This latest controversy surrounding the ABC’s investigative reporting projects comes after the exposure of editorial failings in two highly promoted documentaries – True Crime: The Ghost Train Fire, and Juanita: A Family Mystery – that aired on the public broadcaster last year.

Errors in The Ghost Train, ­involving former NSW Labor premier Neville Wran, prompted the ABC to order an independent editorial review, while the Nielsen TV series and podcast were stripped from the ABC’s platforms and are subject to an ongoing investigation over claims made by retired lawyer John Innes.

At Brisbane’s Eagle Farm racecourse on August 8, 1984, Fine Cotton – a horse with a poor record – was illegally substituted out for a faster horse, Bold ­Personality, which was made to look like Fine Cotton, including a botched attempt to darken its coat with paint. Several conspirators with inside knowledge of the scam stood to make hundreds of thousands of dollars if the sting was successful.

Fine Cotton with trainer Hayden Haitana.

Former Waterhouse form analyst Arthur Harris has also made two complaints to the ABC’s Audience and Consumer Affairs department. He claims the Fine Cotton podcast leaves listeners inferring that both he and David ­Waterhouse are “liars, but these others are not”.

Bill Waterhouse and his son Robbie were banned from racetracks for 14 years over their ­involvement in the Fine Cotton scandal.

David Waterhouse told The Australian he was left stunned when podcast presenter Veronica Milsom said: “Hadn’t David been described as a devious and ­unreliable witness by a judge in a previous court case where he had been sued for fraud over a ­painting?”

The 1980s case to which ­Milsom referred involved a civil action in which Waterhouse was ultimately vindicated over the ­alleged authenticity of a painting. But he said the ABC failed to mention the critical point – that he won the case.

Responding to a written complaint by Mr Waterhouse, the podcast's supervising producer and lead reporter Margie Smithurst conceded that “final script edits were done very recently by ABC execs and the lawyers, and I had very little say in the wording changes made”.

“I’m really sorry about this – I tried really hard to make your case for you but some things were beyond my power, quite frankly.”

The controversies with the ABC podcast were first unveiled in News Corp’s Sunday Herald Sun by the newspaper’s associate editor Andrew Rule, who has been writing about crime and ­racing for more than 30 years.

Rule, who was interviewed for the series by the ABC, wrote: “The national broadcaster has nobbled the truth by playing it for cheap laughs.

“The real story, which the ABC team should have delivered after a year, needed tough truths told, not trite trash rehashed.”

Rule said one of the key issues was the ABC’s promotion of “longtime prison inmate Bernie Kidd, a career criminal who has lied all his life, as a quotable source, despite the uncontested fact he worked for corrupt bookie Bill Waterhouse for years as a racehorse nobbler and standover man”.

Harris also wrote to the ABC on March 7 to complain he was “betrayed”, alleging the ABC did not use documents he ­supplied to substantiate his claims about the saga. “There are four prime authorities who know about this case so who in the ABC, on their editorial staff, has got any first hand knowledge? No one,” he wrote.

“All they have is indirect knowledge or gossip.”

The ABC was contacted for comment but did not respond.