ABC Alumni director and former Media Watch presenter Jonathan Holmes has been reading the federal court judgment in the case of Antoinette Lattouf v the ABC, and reflecting on the lessons it has to teach.
27 June 2025
“From start to finish, the whole issue has been just a sorry saga for everyone.” It’s probably the first time in my life I have found myself in whole-hearted agreement with The Australian’s Media Editor James Madden.
Almost everyone involved within the ABC, from Antoinette Lattouf to Ita Buttrose, has now left the Corporation. But some crucial lessons are there to be learned by their successors, and some thorny legal dilemmas remain to be resolved.
Let’s leave the legal conundrum for later. First, the cavalcade of cock-ups.
THE ORIGINAL SIN (OR COCK-UP)
The original sin, the managerial omission that lay behind everything else, was an astonishing act of negligence by the management of Sydney Radio 702.
They appointed Antoinette Lattouf to fill in for Sarah McDonald as presenter of Mornings for the week before Christmas 2023. That decision was taken by Mark Spurway, the acting boss of 702 Sydney, and his head of content, Elizabeth Green, and endorsed by their boss, the acting head of capital city radio networks, Steve Ahern.
Why? Because, Ahern told his superiors (par 326), she’d done a comparable shift the year before, she was an accomplished broadcaster, and there were very few alternatives available. Ironically, the ABC had put her on a shortlist of potential stand-in presenters on the grounds that, as a female of Lebanese ethnicity, she ticked a couple of ‘diversity’ boxes. Green had had a hand in training her earlier in her career.
But since October 7, when Hamas launched its surprise attack on Israel, and especially since Israel began its merciless riposte against Hamas and the people of Gaza, Lattouf had been busy. In a barrage of posts on Instagram and other social media platforms, and in articles for various outlets, she had lambasted the Western press coverage of the conflict as blatantly favouring Israel; she had ferociously attacked the Netanyahu government, accusing its radical minister for defence and others of genocide; and in the days immediately before going on air, she had co-authored an article in Crikey revealing that the NSW Police could find no proof that demonstrators at the Sydney Opera House had been chorusing ‘Gas the Jews’, as Australia’s media had widely reported.
Police experts, Lattouf reported (accurately, as the NSW police later confirmed), had concluded that in the chant widely shared on social media by pro-Israel activists, and sub-titled ‘Gas the Jews’, the protesters were actually shouting ‘Where’s the Jews?’. Antisemitic in tone, for sure, but not a call for a second holocaust.
All this had made Lattouf a controversial figure, to put it mildly, especially in the Australian Jewish community.
And yet the ABC’s management, astonishingly, were entirely unaware of any of it. When on Monday 18 December ABC Chair Ita Buttrose and Managing Director David Anderson received a number of vitriolic emails about Lattouf – the beginning of what Justice Rangiah calls “an orchestrated campaign by pro-Israel lobbyists to have Ms Lattouf taken off air” – it took them, and the rest of ABC management, entirely by surprise.
By 3.30 on the Monday afternoon, Steve Ahern was still giving his bosses inaccurate information. In an email about Lattouf’s “views on the Israel-Gaza War”, he did mention the ‘Gas the Jews’ article, but added:
She has expressed views about being a child of migrants and views on discrimination, but has not, as far as we know, expressed personal views that would position her as biased in the current conflict.
Well, ‘biased’ is a loaded word. But to imply that Lattouf had not made perfectly plain where her sympathies lay was simply absurd.
Ahern, an experienced radio manager who had worked for the ABC in the 90s and had returned to manage Radio Sydney in 2019, later took full responsibility for the “mistaken decision” to appoint her.
As well he should, though the fault was not his alone.
Of course, it’s possible that the ABC, in the full knowledge of Lattouf’s outspoken views on the conflict, might have decided that so long as she did not cover the Gaza conflict on air, she was still a suitable stand-in for a week. But if that had happened, they would have been ready for the “orchestrated campaign” and indeed would have given Lattouf clear riding instructions.
But it’s plain from the details in the judgment that no one in management at the time – and certainly not the Chair, Ita Buttrose – believed that with the war still raging, Lattouf should have been hired. From the Monday morning, as David Anderson put it, they were in “damage control”. Steve Ahern’s “negligent error” had put the ABC in an “untenable position”.
THE ROLE OF THE CHAIR
Given the foregoing, it’s not surprising that Ita Buttrose should have reacted with astonishment to the “orchestrated campaign” of emails she began to receive on the Monday morning. “How on earth did it happen that an activist has ended up hosting ABC radio?” she asked David Anderson.
But from the start her sympathies seem to have been with the protesters, not with the ABC. The use of that word ‘activist’ is one indicator. So is the fact that she took no apparent interest in whether Lattouf was dealing with the conflict on air. The complaints were entirely about what Lattouf had said and written prior to her engagement. Yet Buttrose’s concern from the outset (like that of the complainants) was to get rid of her.
Buttrose did not send the emails she received to the ABC Ombudsman – a post that she herself had created, to deal with complaints against the ABC. Instead, she sent them to Anderson and, despite his discouragement, to Chris Oliver-Taylor, the Chief Content Officer. When by the Tuesday management had come up with the sensible decision that to terminate Lattouf’s on-air activities prematurely would cause more trouble for the ABC than if she remained, Buttrose plainly opposed it. She displayed absolutely no understanding of the outrage with which a premature dismissal without due cause would be greeted, or the damage it would do to the ABC’s reputation. She seemed more concerned with her email in-box just before Christmas: “I’m over getting emails about her”.
To cap it all, she alleged after the trial that David Anderson, the man she had appointed as Managing Director not once, but twice, had committed criminal perjury in his evidence – an allegation that the judge simply does not mention in his judgment.
Chris Oliver-Taylor told the court that he did not think he was obliged to, or should, take notice of Buttrose’s views. Both he and David Anderson were much more concerned with the revelation that the ABC had indeed hired someone who would not be perceived as impartial on the main story of the week, and how to limit the damage. But the judge did find that he was influenced both by the barrage of complaints from the pro-Israel lobby AND by The Australian’s Sophie Elsworth – the pressure from the Chair to take precipitate action would have done nothing to stiffen his spine.
Justin Milne; Ita Buttrose; even Kim Williams, as demonstrated by the Austen Tayshus affair – none of them fully understood the duties, and the limitations, of the job of ABC Chair. It’s a Prime Ministerial appointment and nobody teaches them until they’re in it.
THE ROLE OF DAVID ANDERSON
The court found that Anderson was NOT involved in the decision to remove Lattouf from her on-air duties, which was taken by Chris Oliver-Taylor on the Wednesday morning when Anderson, ironically, was having Christmas lunch with Buttrose.
Anderson WAS involved in the sensible decision, taken on the Tuesday morning, that Lattouf should be left in place for the remainder of her contract (another 3 days), as he explained in an email to Buttrose (who was already pushing for her immediate removal from on air duties):
If we do remove her, there will be claims of doing so without cause given her position on the Middle East was widely known prior to her engagement, [claims that] we have caved to pro-Israeli lobbying, and [claims that] she hasn’t actually breached impartiality this week. Again, we have been placed in an untenable position.
However, it was Anderson who on the Monday night personally examined some of Lattouf’s previous social media posts and entirely misunderstood one of them, which led him to the extraordinary statement that her posts were “full of antisemitic hatred”. (They were certainly full of virulent criticism of the Netanyahu government but that is not the same thing). See judgment par 504. There is no evidence in the judgment that any other ABC manager bothered to look in detail at Lattouf’s posts, even after the storm broke on the Monday morning – again, weird.
That sensible decision was over-ridden by Chief Content Officer Chris Oliver-Taylor the following (Wednesday) morning when he was made aware of Lattouf’s Instagram post calling her followers’ attention to a Human Rights Watch report that accused Israel of using hunger as a weapon (a war crime).
It is therefore not true that Anderson supinely went along with Buttrose’s calls for Lattouf’s dismissal. He was certainly not a stalwart defender of Lattouf or of her position, but he was aware of the consequences of precipitate action. But he felt, rightly or wrongly, that his most senior subordinate having made a decision in his absence, he should support it.
Unfortunately, the decision was made on false premises, and with incomplete advice.
THE ‘DIRECTION’ THAT NEVER WAS: CHINESE WHISPERS
What changed Chris Oliver-Taylor’s mind was the discovery by the ABC on the Wednesday morning that Lattouf had posted the Human Rights Watch (HRW) Instagram post on Tuesday afternoon. Oliver-Taylor was convinced that she had been instructed or directed not to post anything on the Gaza War and had deliberately disobeyed this “directive”.
He had indeed made clear on the Monday morning that he wanted such a directive to be given, and Ben Latimer, the head of Audio, had assured him that it had been; but at a Teams Meeting on the Wednesday morning Elizabeth Green (who was the ONLY manager to talk directly to Lattouf) told her seniors (Ahern, Latimer and Acting Editorial Director Simon Melkman) that she had “advised” Lattouf “against posting on social media while she was presenting Mornings, but that I did not consider my conversation with Ms Lattouf …to have been a ‘direction’.” [Green appears not to have revealed to her seniors that on the Monday she had agreed with Lattouf that posting factual material from a reputable source would be OK. That is what Lattouf thought she was doing.]
But Green’s warning apparently did not reach Chris Oliver-Taylor (who joined the meeting after Green had left). We don’t know why. The judge does not believe that nobody made Oliver-Taylor aware of what Green had said moments earlier, but I guess it depends how much sense and fortitude they had. My impression is, not much of either.
Oliver-Taylor never spoke to Green, the manager who had supposedly delivered the ‘directive’ to Lattouf. He did not give Lattouf any chance to respond to the charges against her. It was indeed a panicked reaction, based on false premises, exacerbated by the pressure from Buttrose and The Australian’s questions. Oliver-Taylor relied on the notion that Lattouf was not being dismissed and that to reduce her workload to zero was within the terms of her contract – a belief the judge dismissed. Anderson and Buttrose were at lunch and unreachable.
A sorry tale of misinformation and poor judgment under pressure. Not just by Oliver-Taylor but by the other ABC execs who were all asked for their opinion, all supported Lattouf’s removal from her on air job, and none of whom relayed Green’s warning that she had not given Lattouf a ‘directive’.
THE LEGAL ISSUE AND ABC IMPARTIALITY
Most of the above is familiar to those who followed the story thoroughly. What is new, and most alarming, is the actual legal decision.
It is unremarkable that the ABC lost on the grounds of not following the procedures laid down in the Employment Agreement. Once the judge found that Lattouf had indeed been dismissed (as opposed to her contract being varied in a way that it allowed the ABC to do, as the ABC argued), there was no chance that it could win on that one.
What is more concerning is that the judge also found that Lattouf had been dismissed because she held certain political opinions. Clause 772 of the Fair Work Act makes it illegal for an employer to terminate someone’s employment for a variety of reasons, including the holding of a ‘political opinion’.
The ABC argued strenuously that it had a legal duty under the ABC Act to preserve the perception of its impartiality, and that it was that concern, not a disapproval of her particular opinions, that motivated her removal from on-air duties. In this instance, that argument did not persuade the judge.
In a complex series of judgments and observations, (roughly pars 600 to 634) Justice Rangiah found (as I understand it) that although one reason for Chris Oliver-Taylor’s decision was the desire to guard the ABC’s reputation for impartiality, another was his belief that in the HRW post, Lattouf had expressed support for the view that Israel was using hunger as a political weapon, and that that view was biased.
The judge found that Lattouf was terminated at least partly because she both held and expressed a political opinion in the HRW post that the ABC disapproved of, and therefore that her termination contravened s772 of the Fair Work Act.
The ABC’s lawyers will be going over the judgment with a fine-tooth comb, but my concern is (and I think the Alumni’s should be) that it limits the ABC’s ability to enforce its editorial guidelines and its social media policy with respect to the expression by its presenters and journalists of political opinions. On the face, it is illegal for the ABC to punish or dismiss anyone for holding or expressing any particular political position. So what happens to impartiality?
I have discussed this with a senior ABC person (who is also not a lawyer). They hold the view that IF there had been a clear directive, in writing, to Lattouf not to post at all on the Gaza War, or IF her post had contravened the current ABC social media guidelines (which it did not), the ABC could have won the case by claiming that the problem was not Lattouf’s political opinion, but her disobeying legitimate directives and guidelines.
Well, maybe. But this judgment will clearly strengthen the hand of those who believe that even an ABC journalist is entitled to political views, and to express them on their private social media platforms. And that, to me (and more pertinently, to Kim Williams) would be a perilous position for the ABC to accept.
SHOULD THE ABC HAVE SETTLED?
Lattouf and her lawyers have accused the ABC of rejecting an offer to settle for $85,000 and of wasting oodles of public money. Hugh Marks’s statement implies something similar. Most of the media have taken up the “wasted money” cry. However, members of the Alumni board were told by David Anderson that the ABC had made strenuous efforts to settle and had offered more money than it is now being ordered to pay.
The problem, as we understand it, was not the monetary compensation that Lattouf was demanding, but other matters: she wanted ‘re-instatement’ to her position for a full five shifts, and an apology in terms that the ABC didn’t feel it could concede. These were the sticking points, not the money.
So, a few lessons:
LESSON 1: FOLLOW THE PROCEDURES – THEY ARE THERE FOR A REASON
With such a long management chain, instructions/requests/directions easily get confused and Chinese whispers take over. When the ABC’s reputation and someone’s job depend on it, it is crucial to determine what EVERYONE in the chain actually said to the next one down. That’s why there’s a requirement in the EA that employees should have a chance to respond to charges.
LESSON 2: PANIC MAKES FOR BAD DECISIONS
Did anyone get formal legal advice? Did anyone talk to HR (“People and Culture”)? It seems from the judgment that the answer is no. Because Lattouf’s tenure was so short, The Australian’s story was pending, and the complaints kept coming, ABC management felt it did not have time to do things properly – as Alan Sunderland has pointed out. Even the sober Melkman went along with the decision to suspend Lattouf – they were all persuaded that she had disobeyed a directive, even though most of them were told that day that there had been no such directive.
LESSON 3: SUPPORT YOUR STAFF RATHER THAN COMPLAINANTS
My own reading of the evidence – though not Justice Rangiah’s – is that Oliver-Taylor was not concerned about the rightness or wrongness of HRW’s allegation that Israel was using hunger as a weapon. He was overwhelmingly pre-occupied with the (mistaken) idea that Lattouf had deliberately disobeyed a clear directive and therefore could not be trusted to continue on air.
David Anderson, at least, was aware that to take Lattouf off air would be construed as the ABC giving in to outside lobbying – as indeed it has been. Even if the ABC did make a mistake in hiring Lattouf, she had behaved impeccably on air, and standing up to the pro-Israel lobby until and unless she betrayed bias on air would have done the ABC far less damage than what it has now suffered – and sent a signal to its own staff that what matters is what they broadcast, not what they think.
Her HRW post, after all, did no more than point to a report that ABC News had already covered. A clear directive that there should be no further posts on the Gaza conflict that week, delivered (ideally) by Oliver-Tayor directly to Lattouf, would surely have caused less damage. Of course, she might have refused to accept the directive, but it was worth a try.
What we have got instead is severe damage to the ABC’s reputation, severe damage to a lot of ABC careers, and at least a million dollars in costs. And that could yet be more – a hearing on whether a pecuniary penalty should be imposed on the ABC is yet to come.
– By Jonathan Holmes