Antoinette Lattouf v ABC LIVE updates: Ita Buttrose ‘influenced’ former presenter’s axing, barrister says as closing submissions continue

The ABC’s barrister Ian Neil, SC, tells the Federal Court that Antoinette Lattouf was “taken off-air because she did something she was told not to do”.

Asked by Justice Darryl Rangiah what she was told not to do, Neil says: “She was told, in effect, not to post anything in relation to the conflict in Israel and Gaza during the week she was with the ABC.”

Rangiah notes that Lattouf’s line manager Elizabeth Green gave evidence in court that she did not give Lattouf a direction not to post anything but did convey advice.

At the time of Lattouf’s removal from the airwaves, Green was ABC Radio Sydney’s content director. She is now executive producer of its Drive program.

“I explained [to colleagues] that I had had ‘spoken with’ or ‘had a word with’ Ms Lattouf and advised her against posting on social media while she was presenting Mornings, but that I did not consider my conversation with Ms Lattouf about posting on social media to have been a ‘direction’,” Green said in an affidavit.

Green gave evidence that she had told Lattouf it was “best not to post anything that would be considered controversial while you’re with us”, but if “something is fact based and from a verified source, I am sure it would be fine”.

Rangiah asks Neil how his submissions “gel with what Ms Green said in her affidavit”. The ABC does not challenge Green’s account but Neil says she gave a “clear statement” to Lattouf about not posting on social media.

“Properly understood, this was a very narrow qualification to the overarching expectation,” Neil says of the suggestion that posts that were “fact based and from a verifiable source” would be acceptable.

Neil also says that nobody else called to give evidence by the ABC remembers Green telling them that she had not given Lattouf a direction. However, the ABC does not challenge her account.