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The ABC spent $3.42 million in legal fees in the 2023-24 monetary year, unique documents purchased by Crikey under freedom of information (FOI) legal guidelines reveal.
The documents additionally show that the ABC handled two unfair dismissal or Exquisite Work issues in the 2023-24 monetary year. The costs associated to one of these issues was $0; the other topic is that of sacked presenter Antoinette Lattouf’s ongoing unfair dismissal case in opposition to the broadcaster.
Lattouf commenced legal lawsuits in December 2023 after being pushed other than a five-day informal contract on ABC Radio Sydney. It adopted an Instagram post by Lattouf of a Human Rights Search picture alleging Israel was the usage of starvation as a machine of war, and a subsequent campaign by pro-Israel lobbyists that centered then ABC chair Ita Buttrose and managing director David Anderson.
What portion of the $3.42 million was spent on the legal fight with Lattouf is unclear. Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi establish questions to the broadcaster in Senate estimates in May perchance perhaps, asking how much the ABC had spent on the case. In August, the ABC responded, declining to plot the figure to steer trudge of “prejudice [to] the ABC’s position in these legal lawsuits”. The ABC confirmed that it was being represented by main employment legislation company Seyfarth Shaw, with a accomplice and two friends working on the case. The ABC has additionally engaged two barristers for the lawsuits, together with main silk Ian Neil SC.
Faruqi said in August that “the public has a appropriate to clutch how much the ABC is spending to defend their sacking of journalist Antoinette Lattouf”.
A spokesperson for the ABC declined to confirm how much had been spent namely on the Lattouf topic.
A Sydney barrister specialising in employment legislation, speaking to Crikey on the condition of anonymity, said it wasn’t unreasonable to direct the cost of the Lattouf case can also very successfully be in the tens of millions of bucks.
“Realistically, a truly minute topic in say, the Exquisite Work Commission or the Industrial Court, appropriate a minute extra or much less [discrimination] topic or one thing, these are about $200,000,” the barrister said.
They estimated a one-week trial in the Federal Court with “a silk of that eminence” would cost around $10,000 to $15,000 a day.
“And then you’ve got a junior as successfully who will be charging $5,000 a day. That’s the barristers, plus the preparation upfront. And then solicitors … a accomplice at a neat legislation company these days prices doubtlessly around the $800 an hour establish,” they said.
They went on to present that the workload for lawyers in a case would be “a minimal of three weeks [worth of work] for a one week hearing … a silk wouldn’t be doing all of that despite the incontrovertible truth that,” and confirmed that the weeks in question have been enormously longer than the normal 40-hour work week.
Information relating to to the costs of defamation cases at the ABC was additionally far flung from the scope of Crikey’s FOI question, but in October 2023 the ABC was ordered to pay $412,315 plus costs to veteran Particular Forces commando Heston Russell in a excessive-profile defamation loss. Russell had engaged the services and products of successfully-known defamation silk Sue Chrysanthou SC, who was instructed by the excessive-profile Rebekah Giles.
