Senator Jacinta Price in defamation case for press release regarding CEO of Aboriginal land council CEO

ABC NEWS (Australia)

A week-long defamation case has heard claims Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price "trampled" on the reputation of the CEO of an Aboriginal land council when she authorised the publication of a press release to more than one thousand journalists in mid-2024.

Transcript

00:00Senator Jacinta Numpajimpa-Price is being sued by the CEO of the Central Land Council here in the

00:09Northern Territory, Leslie Turner, over a press release which was published and distributed to

00:14media back in July of 2024. Court documents which outline Mr Turner's claim state the

00:21senator's release implied Mr Turner had behaved so unprofessionally that it warranted his dismissal

00:27and that he was unfit to continue to occupy the role of CEO. During her opening speech on Monday

00:34Mr Turner's lawyer Sue Chrysanthou SC who is a prominent defamation lawyer said Senator Price

00:40had trampled on the reputation of Mr Turner without caring at all whether what she was saying about

00:46him was true or false. The July 2024 press release was distributed to over a thousand journalists and

00:54was also uploaded to Senator Price's website. It has since been removed but Senator Price has never

01:00publicly apologized for it. Originally Senator Price was relying on a number of grounds including the

01:07truth defense to fight this legal action however that has since been amended. Court documents filed

01:13in March show Senator Price is now relying on the qualified privileged defense and state she had

01:19reasonable grounds to believe that what she was told was true. Over the next seven days of this hearing

01:25there are expected to be a number of witnesses giving evidence including staff members from the

01:30central land council as well as text message email and phone call evidence. In her opening statement to

01:36the court Ms Chrysanthou also foreshadowed evidence expected to be heard over coming days about an alleged

01:43leadership coup to overthrow Mr Turner as CEO of the land council involving a former Alice Springs local

01:50council member and former chair of the land council Matthew Palmer.

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