Ita Buttrose bites back: ‘I was over getting emails about Ms Lattouf’
"If I wanted someone removed, I'd be franker than that."
Former ABC Chair Ita Buttrose has held her own in a fierce exchange with sacked broadcaster Antoinette Lattouf’s lawyer on Tuesday afternoon.
The 83-year-old took the stand as part of the public broadcaster’s defence against Lattouf’s unfair dismissal case currently being heard in the Sydney Federal court.
Buttrose, a media veteran, appeared on the stand in a wheelchair and bright blue suit jacket. She matched wits with Lattouf’s barrister, Philip Boncardo, firmly.
She denied that an email she sent to then-ABC managing director David Anderson was an instruction to sack Lattouf.
“That’s an update question. ‘What’s happening? Are we replacing her?”
“I was over getting emails about Ms Lattouf,” she said.
Buttrose was ABC Chair from 2019-2024, including during Lattouf’s five-day stint at ABC Radio Sydney in December 2023.
In June 2024, the Fair Work Commission ruled Lattouf had been sacked by the ABC when she was removed from air before completing the five days, after sharing a social media post accusing Israel as using starvation as a “weapon of war”.
The ABC claimed that Lattouf was not fired, but simply taken off air as she “failed or refused to comply with directions that she not post on social media about matters of controversy during the short period she was presenting”.
On Tuesday morning, the public broadcaster backed away from a controversial legal claim that Lattouf hadn’t proved the existence of a Lebanese, Middle Eastern, or Arab race.
“The ABC does not put in issue, that is, does not dispute or contest that the Lebanese, Middle Eastern or Arab races exist,” said the ABC’s lead barrister, Ian Neil SC.
In the afternoon, Buttrose described Lattouf as a “controversial broadcaster”, an “activist” and said if she wanted to remove a personality off air, she would “be franker than that”.
In questioning, Boncardo claimed Buttrose was not telling the truth about seeking to dismiss Lattouf.
In a revealing line, repeated twice, Buttrose said David Anderson had wanted her to email chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor to teach him a lesson about “the folly of not checking references”.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the creative and PR beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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