Elaine Stead defamation trial: I’m Joe Aston and she’s clearly a cretin

Joe Aston has come halfway around the world to defend what he says is his right to publish an honestly held opinion about venture-capitalist Elaine Stead.

Journalist Joe Aston leaves the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday with barrister Sandy Dawson. Picture: Jane Dempster

“You describe yourself as a columnist; what kind of columnist are you?” inquired Elaine Stead’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, of Joe Aston.

“Not a very popular one,” he cheerfully replied.

It was a nice, light quip, one of several to punctuate the evidence being given at a Federal Court defamation trial involving The Australian Financial Review’s star columnist and the venture-capitalist.

Dr Stead, former managing director of venture capital at now-defunct fund manager Blue Sky Alternative Investments, is suing the Financial Review and Aston for defamation over a series of columns between February and October 2019 and a tweet by the journalist in October that year.

Justice Michael Lee, presiding, has landed some of the best lines himself. Shortly after bemoaning the fact that some of the people who turn up to listen to the case on Microsoft Team each day don’t know how to mute their microphones, for example, Justice Lee said: “At least we’ve had no Jeffrey Toobin problems.”

If you don’t get it, well, let’s just say that Mr Toobin, formerly of the New Yorker, will be getting laptop camera covers for Christmas.

Jokes aside, the case is of course a serious one, concerned as it is with the limits placed on free speech in Australia.

Aston has come halfway around the world — he lives and works in Los Angeles these days — to defend what he says is his right to publish an honestly held opinion about Dr Stead, who says her reputation was irreparably damaged when Aston called her, among other things, stupid, and a cretin.

And yes, he told the court, he knows that’s a tautology.

He takes his English prowess seriously.

Elaine Stead, right, with barrister Sue Chrysanthou outside court on Monday. Picture: Jane Dempster

Speaking of English, Aston was able to take the stand only after a long Monday morning’s legal wrangling about the meaning of words such as “wanton” and “deliberate”.

The delay prompted Justice Lee to say he didn’t want Aston to have to sit hanging around like “a stale bottle of beer” waiting to give evidence.

After taking the oath, he was asked to describe the role he plays at the “Fin”, and found it a bit tricky.

Yes, he agreed, he had once self-identified as a gossip columnist but added “what kind of columnist am I?”

“I’m lost,” he said, except that it’s part of his role to target, with humour, “hypocrisy, cant, self-importance … extending right through to wrongdoing”.

Ms Chrysanthou wanted to know: when trying to entertain, did he sometimes use “shocking language”?

“Shocking is I think harsh,” he said. “Colourful.”

“Do you think that you’re fearless?”

“Yes.”

“You need to push boundaries to sell papers?”

“No, that’s not an imperative of mine, no.”

Aston agreed that he sometimes targets individuals, often over months or years, and that he occasionally goes out of his way “to take people down, using the Rear Window column”.

He often uses mockery, he said.

For example, he agreed under questioning, he had at one point referred to Dr Stead as Brick Tamland, the dimwitted “gaping moron” from Anchorman.

“And Anchorman II?” Justice Lee inquired.

“Yes, I apologise for that omission,’’ Aston said.

Aston said Dr Stead had changed her profile picture to that character “so she seemed to be running with the joke as well’’.

Aston said he was not intending to insult Dr Stead.

“I did that to be amusing,” Aston said.

But yes, he readily agreed, he did think Dr Stead was stupid, a view formed after he examined some of the decisions she made while at Blue Sky.

As an example, he offered her investment in the now-defunct bespoke shoe company, Shoes of Prey, whose business “looked really dumb”.

Aston said the business plan included a “Cinderella strategy” to only make shoes for people with really small, really large, or quite unusual feet.

“It was stupid,” he said.

“Are you a fashion expert, Mr Aston?” Ms Chrysanthou said.

“I wouldn’t say I’m an expert,” he said modestly, while simultaneously dazzling the court in gold-tie, dark-suit, no pocket-square combo.

Aston also singled out “stupid social media posts” on the day Blue Sky went into a trading halt, in which Dr Stead said she “needed a hug”.

He was aware that she had won awards, but said awards presented by her peers wouldn’t help investors “pay their mortgages.”

Under questioning, he admitted that he couldn’t really know what this referred to, although he didn’t think it meant her dog had died.

“I knew that most of Elaine’s business had gone to shit,” he said.

In a tweet to promote one of his articles, Aston called Dr Stead a “pyromaniac” but said that he obviously didn’t mean that she literally went around setting fire to people’s money.

He agreed that he had also referred to Dr Stead as a “feminist cretin” in a column that also mentioned writer Clementine Ford. Asked why he’d made the link, he agreed that he believed both were feminists, both were stupid and he believed that both were asking their supporters for money.

He said Dr Stead had made reference in a private Instagram post to being broke, and needing to crowdsource $5000 to take a business trip to Mongolia.

It was put to him that this was obviously a joke.

“What’s the punchline of that joke?” he said. Well, we don’t yet know, although we can of course guess what the Nine Entertainment Company, ultimate owner of the AFR, is hoping: that it’s not on them.