The former ABC chair Ita Buttrose sent six emails in rapid succession detailing complaints about Antoinette Lattouf to the broadcaster’s content chief, Chris Oliver-Taylor, in the hours leading up to the casual presenter’s dismissal, federal court documents show.
With the subject line “Ms Lattouf”, the stream of emails was sent between 11.13am and 11.32am on the Wednesday before the journalist was sacked at 1.30pm. Included in Oliver-Taylor’s affidavit, filed by the ABC on Monday, were dozens of complaints the chair had received about the ABC’s decision to hire Lattouf.
Buttrose’s assistant had informed Oliver-Taylor he would be seeing all the emails she had received.
“The Chair/Board has received several email complaints regarding Antoinette Lattouf,” Buttrose’s assistant wrote to Oliver-Taylor. “After a discussion between Ita and [the managing director] David [Anderson] we’ve been advised to forward these emails to you – please find them attached.”
“I think we will keep getting these complaints until Antoinette leaves,” Buttrose wrote to Oliver-Taylor at 11.25am.
Lattouf was taken off air three days into a five-day casual contract in December 2023 after she posted on social media about the Israel-Gaza war. She took legal action and, in June 2024, the Fair Work Commission found she was sacked. She is pursuing a case alleging unlawful termination in the federal court.
On Tuesday and Wednesday five remaining witnesses will give evidence regarding the claim before Justice Darryl Rangiah in Sydney’s federal court: Buttrose; the former Sydney local radio manager Steve Ahern; ABC Radio Sydney’s content director, Elizabeth Green; the acting editorial director, Simon Melkman, and the director of audio, Ben Latimer.
Buttrose is due to appear in court about midday on Tuesday.
Correspondence filed in the court shows Buttrose was frustrated that she was being targeted by the complainants and that she had repeatedly asked Anderson why Lattouf was still on air.
The emails also show that the ABC was warned by its own editorial standards expert – Melkman – that if the broadcaster pursued disciplinary action against Lattouf, management should first consult the people and culture department.
“There’s an established process for this, which involves formally investigating and giving the person procedural fairness etc,” Melkman wrote on Monday 18 December.
Anderson conceded at last week’s trial that “steps” had been missed in the ABC’s usual processes. Oliver-Taylor told the court he had relied on his direct reports to take all the necessary action.
In the emails included in the federal court documents Melkman also warned that Lattouf “would make it [a dismissal] a very big (and very public) issue” and they should be “mindful of how things might play out”.
In an email sent after reading the complaints, Melkman wrote that some of the complainants were “seriously misguided” in their reference to the ABC’s code of practice because it “applies to content we broadcast, not our hiring decisions”.
Emails from Oliver-Taylor show that after her social media post, which he was informed of at 12.19pm on Wednesday 20 December, he wanted to stand Lattouf down before the Australian published an article about it.
“Ben [Latimer] reviewing, but if she has [breached guidelines] we will have to stand her down,” Oliver-Taylor wrote to ABC communications at 12.43pm. “If we do that we should do it before the story runs.”
“At or around 2.39 pm on Wednesday, 20 December 2023, an article with headline ‘ABC presenter Antoinette Lattouf sacked after anti-Israel social media posts’ was posted on theaustralian.com.au website,” the timeline published by the court said.
Oliver-Taylor told the court last week he had spoken to the Australian’s Sophie Elsworth, who wrote the article, when she called him but that he told her ‘no comment’ and had no idea who had leaked the story.
Rangiah opened proceedings on Tuesday saying he was “deeply unhappy” that the ABC originally filed an unredacted version of the affidavit despite a federal court order that the names of the people who complained to the ABC about Lattouf should remain private.
The mistake was realised and the document was taken down. The ABC barrister Ian Neil SC apologised for what he says was “human error”.
The redacted affidavit was re-uploaded on Tuesday.
