In the courtroom of an unlawful termination case launched by journalist Antoinette Lattouf, former ABC chair Ita Buttrose has been asked about emails she sent following complaints about Lattouf.
In one email, Buttrose told ABC managing director David Anderson she was “over” receiving complaints about Lattouf, prior to her removal.
“I have a whole clutch more complaints. Can’t she come down with flu or COVID or a stomach upset? We owe her nothing,” Buttrose wrote in the email.
Part way through a fill-in presenting stint on ABC Radio Sydney in December 2023, Lattouf was taken off air.
Lattouf alleged the ABC told her she breached the organisation’s social media policy by sharing a post from Human Rights Watch about the war in Gaza. The ABC has denied her employment was unlawfully terminated, and both parties failed to resolve the matter at mediation in the Fair Work Commission last year.
On Tuesday afternoon, Buttrose entered the witness box for Lattouf’s unlawful termination case, to answer questions about her emails tabled to the court last week.
When asked about wanting Lattouf to become “ill”, Buttrose said that she’d written this thinking it “would give her an easy exit, that’s all it was, a suggestion.”
Responding to the suggestion that she was hostile towards Lattouf for suggesting the ABC owes her nothing, Buttrose said “She was a five-day casual. Some people look on the ABC as a cash cow. We’re not a cash cow.”
“She obviously upset the listeners of the ABC, and we were looking into it,” Buttrose said.
When asked about why she’d thought Lattouf shouldn’t have been hired, Buttrose called Lattouf “a controversial broadcaster”.
“I think in relation to the Gaza-Israel conflict, she was an activist, that was quite apparent,” said Buttrose.
Lattouf’s lawyers are arguing that senior executives were influenced by pro-Israel lobbyists in their decision to take her off air early.
When Buttrose was asked if she came to her conclusions based solely on the complaints received—which she agreed were inaccurate—Buttrose said she’d formed her own view as a “general observer of life.”
Buttrose denied she was aware of a coordinated campaign to have Lattouf taken off air, despite noting similar or identical wording in the complaints received.
The court heard that Buttrose sent additional unprompted emails to complainants, informing them that Lattouf was dismissed that day.
Buttrose said responding to any complaint she received was the “procedure she followed”throughout her five-year tenure as chair.
Lattouf’s team also submitted evidence of an email sent by Buttrose to Anderson the afternoon Lattouf was dismissed, which read: “It’s nice to get congratulatory emails.”
Buttrose had written the statement alongside forwarding a complaint from a member of the public, thanking her and the ABC board for firing Lattouf.
“They’re few and far between,” Buttrose told the court about the congratulatory emails.
“I didn’t wish for her to be removed. I didn’t put pressure on anybody. It’s a fantasy of your own imagination. I have nothing to do with her dismissal.”