Court rules on lawfulness of ABC’s firing of journalist

The Federal Court has determined whether the national broadcaster was in the wrong when it fired journalist Antoinette Lattouf after a social media post about the Gaza-Israel war.

Justice Darryl Rangiah has found that former ABC journalist Antoinette Lattouf was unfairly dismissed by her employer over previous social media posts and has ordered the ABC to pay her $70,000 in compensation.

His Honour found that the ABC breached the Fair Work Act by terminating Lattouf’s employment “for reasons including that she held political opinions opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza”.

However, Justice Rangiah rejected Lattouf’s allegations that the reasons for her termination included her race.

In the judgment, Rangiah J said he was ultimately “not satisfied” that the ABC proved “that its substantial and operative reasons for the termination of Ms Lattouf’s employment did not include that Ms Lattouf was attributed with holding a political opinion opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza”.

“It is apparent from observing Ms Lattouf in the witness box that the termination of her employment and the circumstances in which it occurred caused her great distress and continues to do so. That is unsurprising,” the judgment said.

“She was dismissed on short notice. She was not given any opportunity to answer the allegations against her in circumstances where she had compelling answers to give. Any person would feel utterly dismayed and humiliated in those circumstances.”

Justice Rangiah awarded $70,000 in compensation for “non-economic loss”, despite Lattouf arguing in the case that she should be awarded a compensation between $100,000 and $150,000.

In addition, His Honour said that he would “make directions to bring the matter to a hearing on the question of whether any pecuniary penalty ought to be imposed on the ABC” for breaches of the Fair Work Act, as well as the potential amount of that penalty.

Lattouf claimed the ABC contravened the Fair Work Act 2009 by terminating her in December 2023 for reasons that include her political opinions and/or her race, national extraction or social origin.

The termination came after Lattouf shared a post on her Instagram story from the Human Rights Watch that reported the Israeli government had been using starvation “as a weapon of war”.

In closing submissions, Lattouf’s counsel, Oshie Fagir, said she was dropped from ABC Radio Sydney because the broadcaster bowed to the “vituperative complaints” from a pro-Israel lobbyist group, which objected to Lattouf’s opinions on the Israel and Palestine conflict.

While ABC argued her dismissal was due to a breach of its social media policy, Lattouf’s lawyers claimed it has since admitted there was no such breach and its own evidence “makes clear” Lattouf had not breached any direction given to her by senior managers.

“The circumstances in which Lattouf was dismissed were a procedural travesty,” Fagir said in written submissions.

“She was sacked without notice or warning and given no opportunity to defend herself. The dismissal offended any notion of procedural or substantive fairness, and flagrantly contravened multiple provisions of the ABC Enterprise Agreement 2022–2025.”

In response, the ABC said senior management decided to keep Lattouf on ABC Radio Sydney despite the volume of complaints and the risk of reputational damage but put in place “mitigating plans”.

One such mitigating plan was a direction given to Lattouf to refrain from posting anything controversial on social media, ABC said.

On the afternoon of 20 December 2023, after the ABC became aware of the Human Rights Watch post, steps were taken to stand Lattouf down due to a breach of policies and failure to follow direction.

“The correct position is that the ABC, by its senior officers and its published policies, accepted that it had statutory obligations to be, and to be seen to be, impartial, and made it known to employees that it was expected that they would not conduct themselves so as to compromise the appearance of impartiality,” ABC said.

More to come.