First the courtiers, then the queen.
After a week of testimony from a stream of ABC managers, it was time for Ita Buttrose, the broadcaster’s former chair, to take the stand.
Buttrose – a doyenne of Australian media, a household name, with a voice and face familiar even to those who can name no other ABC chair – was the most-anticipated witness in the unlawful termination case brought by Antoinette Lattouf against the ABC.
Buttrose’s words have already featured in this case, which centres around a five-day casual presenting gig that Lattouf was given in December 2023. Lattouf was dismissed three days into the contract after posting on social media about the war in Gaza.
Buttrose’s emails to the managing director, David Anderson, about Lattouf, saying she was sick of getting complaints about the journalist, and suggesting Lattouf might “come down with flu” to get her off air, have been read aloud.
Chris Oliver-Taylor, who gave hours of testimony last Friday, conceded that he had felt “pressure from above” after he started getting complaints about Lattouf forwarded directly to him from Buttrose.
The 83-year-old finally arrived on Tuesday afternoon in a wheelchair and received some help from the court officer in manoeuvring between the enormous lever arch files that contained various documents, affidavits and other evidence. But any sense that the former ABC chair was anything but her pin-sharp self was shortly and witheringly dispatched.
Buttrose swatted away the barrister Philip Boncardo’s questions of cross-examination as if he were an irritant.
When asked questions, Buttrose often answered Boncardo not with “yes” but with dismissive answers of “So?”.
Several times she fixed him with a steely look and answered with an arch “obviously”, several times she talked over the judge, several times she talked over the ABC’s own barrister as he rose to object to questions being put to her, at one point causing Ian Neil SC to hold up a hand to silence his own witness as he sought to have the question she’d been happily answering ruled objectionable.
Neil’s objections weren’t always needed. Buttrose, unflappable, handled some herself.
“That’s a hypothetical question and I can’t answer it,” she told Boncardo at one point.
“Do you want to take a stab at it?” Boncardo pressed.
“No,” she said calmly.
At one point, as Boncardo took a minute to get a document from his solicitor, she muttered “Jesus Christ” with a dramatic eye roll – under her breath, but still clearly audible to the court’s microphones.
On the key points, Buttrose said she had not pressured Anderson to take Lattouf off air, nor had she been swayed by the many complaints she had received about Lattouf’s presence on ABC Radio Sydney. She had forwarded all the complaints to Oliver-Taylor at the direction of Anderson (something Anderson disputes in his evidence, saying the direction had come from Buttrose herself), because Anderson wanted Oliver-Taylor “to learn the folly of not checking the references of someone he hired”.
Buttrose told the court it was “quite apparent” that Lattouf was “an activist” and said she thought the presenter should not have been hired. She added that as the complaints had started coming in about Lattouf, Buttrose thought “it looked like [Lattouf] was going to lose her job”. Questioned what made her think that, Buttrose said: “Because I could see which way the wind was blowing.”
Despite this Buttrose insisted she had, until the moment she heard Lattouf had been let go, expected her to remain on air for the full five days for which she was employed.
“That seemed like a perfect solution to me,” said Buttrose, who said that when she heard Lattouf had been let go she had been “surprised” and not pleased.
Asked if she was happy that Lattouf had been fired, Buttrose replied: “No one’s ever happy with a dismissal of anyone. I don’t know why you think that. It’s the worst thing that can happen to anybody. And I’m not happy. And I wasn’t happy. I didn’t wish her to be removed. I didn’t put pressure on anybody. It’s a fantasy of your own imagination.”
Asked about an email in which she wrote to Anderson: “Has Antoinette been replaced? I am over getting emails about her,” Buttrose told the court: “I didn’t want her replaced. I can’t replace anybody, the chair can’t do that.” But then went on to quip: “If I wanted somebody removed I’d be franker than that.”
Buttrose’s sharp composure broke – for a giggle – as she addressed questions about the email she sent Anderson asking of Lattouf’s employment: “Why can’t she come down with flu or Covid or a stomach upset? We owe her nothing.”
Boncardo began his questioning here by asking: “Was it your practice in 2023 to wish that ABC employees would come down with respiratory illnesses?”
Buttrose laughed. “That was just a face-saving idea. I thought it might have been an idea for Antoinette. It’s an easy way to save face.”
But the comment elicited a different reaction from the other side of the room, where there was a shocked gasp from Lattouf and her supporters, who looked at each other wide-eyed and disbelieving.
“David didn’t pick up on the suggestion so we didn’t go ahead with the idea,” Buttrose said, shrugging. “It would give her an easy exit, that’s all it was.”
As the case enters its seventh day in the federal court on Wednesday, there are no easy exits in sight.
