Pop star Guy Sebastian has hit back at reported details of a court dispute involving an ugly neighbourhood feud, saying he fears for his family’s safety.
Sebastian appeared on the Seven Network’s Sunrise on Friday to promote his efforts around youth mental health – but he was also willing to open up on the ongoing court case with his neighbour that has made headlines.
It followed an order in a Sydney court on Thursday that Sebastian must hand over CCTV footage that his much older neighbour alleges shows the singer holding a brick and “towering over” him.
Sebastian told Sunrise that “so much” of what’s been said was false, and denied taking out an apprehended violence order against his 66-year-old neighbour Phillip Richard Hanslow in February.
“I’ve chosen to not say anything, I’ve learned now that it’s … Where do I start? There’s much that’s been said that is not true,” he said, although he didn’t go into further details.
Mr Hanslow’s lawyer Bryan Wrench told Waverley Local Court on Thursday that the bitter row between the pair centred on a fence, which Mr Hanslow had been fixing to match the look of Sebastian’s multimillion-dollar neighbouring property in Maroubra.
Mr Hanslow is defending charges of intimidating Sebastian and damaging his fence.
Sebastian, 41, said the issue was “an ongoing thing, not an isolated event”.
“There was something that transpired between me and him, where I’d asked him to stop damaging my property,” the 2003 Australian Idol winner said.
“Then there were some things that were said on his part, which caused me to have to call the police, and so … it’s not me versus him, it’s the police who decided to take the initiative of taking an AVO out.”
“I think when it comes to do with safety and my family, like, I travel for work, and it’s something that I had to address and there’s nothing I can do except for rely on the help of the police to calm the situation down,” he said.
Mr Wrench told the court that the footage he sought for Mr Hanslow’s case would show the singer “towering” over Wrench with a brick in hand.
Magistrate Jacqueline Milledge adjourned the subpoena matter until March 23 to allow Sebastian’s lawyers team to supply the footage. Failure to do so might lead to Sebastian’s arrest.
On Friday, he told Sunrise that much of what had been reported about the altercation with Mr Hanslow was “completely fabricated” – and the narrative had been flipped to make him look like the bad guy.
Sebastian has been involved in disputes with neighbours for years, with anger stemming from 2016 when renovations began at his 1400-square-metre beachside property – dubbed by some neighbours as a ‘demolition nightmare’.
Sebastian’s three-level concrete and glass home, which was completed in 2019, was designed by architect Joe Snell and intended as a dream home for the singer, wife Jules and their two sons, Hudson and Archie. But it has been criticised by some locals as a fortress.
Court documents show Mr Hanslow is living in Carlton, in Sydney’s south.
He remains subject to the interim AVO taken out by police.
The past few months have been tumultuous for Sebastian. His former manager was jailed in November after a long-running fraud case, and ordered to repay more than $624,000 illegally taken from the Australian Idol winner over eight years.
