A pro-Israel lobby group has asked the federal court to refer a group of editors, reporters and lawyers from the Age and Fairfax Media for contempt proceedings, alleging the newspapers breached a suppression order made by the judge in the Antoinette Lattouf unlawful termination case.
Justice Darryl Rangiah granted a suppression order during the unlawful termination case in February to protect the identities and contact details of pro-Israel individuals who had contacted the ABC with complaints about Lattouf’s employment.
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. In June 2024, the Fair Work Commission found she was sacked and she brought an unlawful termination case in the federal court. Rangiah’s judgment is yet to be handed down.
The court heard during the case then ABC chair Ita Buttrose was frustrated that she was being targeted by the complainants and that she had repeatedly asked then managing director David Anderson why Lattouf was still on air.
On day seven of the hearing, Rangiah reminded the parties about his suppression order, asking any media who may have published the names of some of the people who complained about Lattouf to comply with the order.
“I made a suppression order last Monday. The solicitors acting for the applicants who sought the suppression order have written to the court asserting that a particular media organisation has published articles which disclose the identities of those protected by the suppression order,” he said at the time.
At a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, Sue Chrysanthou SC, acting for the pro-Israel group, expressed her frustration with the Age and Fairfax’s response to her legal letters and sought a referral under federal court rule 42.16 “to consider whether proceedings should be instituted for the punishment of contempt”.
The editors of the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, Patrick Elligett and Bevan Shields, and two Age reporters are among the eight individuals named in the application.
“Regrettably, from my client’s perspective, we had no choice but to bring this application, including against a solicitor, a senior lawyer at Fairfax, who did not respond once to over half [a] dozen letters and a communication from your Honour from the bench,” Chrysanthou said.
Chrysanthou said the respondents had accused her clients of bringing a vexatious application and have denied the contraventions and the alleged contempt.
Asked by Rangiah what the nature of the contempt is, Chrysanthou said: “The alleged contempt is acts by journalists, their supervising editors and their employer, the corporate entity, and their lawyers, to whom we corresponded half a dozen times and received no response.”
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Tom Blackburn SC, acting for the respondents, said because contempt was a criminal charge it was a “very serious allegation” to make against lawyers because they are officers of the court and he had not been given particulars.
Of the journalists named in the application, Blackburn said it was unclear how they “have the power or the authority to cause publication or to prevent the publications being taken down”.
Justice Rangiah ordered Chrysanthou to provide written particulars of the allegations including what parts of the article disclose prohibited information “and on what basis you say that each alleged contender is responsible for such publication or disclosure”.
The interlocutory application has been listed for hearing on 19 June.
