‘We owe her nothing’: Buttrose pushed for Lattouf removal, court hears

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.

Antoinette Lattouf arrives at the Federal Court on Monday ahead of her unlawful dismissal case.Credit: Edwina Pickles

“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.

After explaining Lattouf would finish up on the Friday as part of a “managed exit”, Buttrose responded: “Managed exit, really? We should be in damage control not managed exits, David.”

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.

Outgoing ABC managing director David Anderson is set to appear on Tuesday.Credit: The Sydney Morning Herald

Reports of lobbying attempts have formed an integral part of Lattouf’s wrongful dismissal case, which she filed after being dismissed by the ABC in December 2023, three days into a five-day contract as a stand-in radio presenter.

Anderson, who leaves the ABC at the beginning of March, is one of a number of high-profile witnesses set to appear, alongside the departed Buttrose and chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor, whom documents have shown made the call to remove Lattouf.

Anderson, Buttrose and Oliver-Taylor exchanged a flurry of emails in the days leading up to Lattouf’s termination on December 20, 2023, documents released by the Federal Court on Friday revealed, prompted by a number of direct complaints made after her first show.

Lattouf’s team amended their initial statement of claim in October to reflect their claim both Anderson and Buttrose were key decision-makers in her sacking, after evidence relating to the trial was filed. The ABC has positioned Oliver-Taylor as the decision-maker, who claimed in correspondence that Lattouf had breached a directive.

The presenter brought the case to the Fair Work Commission, arguing she was unlawfully terminated by the ABC based on political opinion and/or race and that the decision to end her contract contravened the public broadcaster’s enterprise agreement.

Her dismissal came after she shared a Human Rights Watch post on Instagram with the caption, “HRW reporting starvation as a tool of war”. In her Fair Work submission, Lattouf said the ABC said the post had breached its social media policies and cited it in its reasons for her dismissal.

Other ABC figures expected to appear include audio boss Ben Latimer, former ABC Radio Sydney manager Steve Ahern, and then-acting editorial director Melkman.

In its response, the ABC called Lattouf’s claim “vague, embarrassing in the legal sense and liable to be struck out”, despite having made multiple attempts to settle the matter before it could be heard in court.

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