00:00A week-long clash between two powerful Indigenous representatives, the final day of Central Land
00:08Council boss Lesley Turner's defamation lawsuit against Senator Jacinta Numpajimpa Price.
00:14Looking forward to getting back to Canberra. Mr Turner are you relieved to have this over?
00:18Mr Turner's lawyer Sue Krasanthu telling the court in closing,
00:23Ms Krasanthu said the politician was told her media release contained inaccuracies,
00:33but she chose to push on regardless. She was told her publication was wrong almost immediately,
00:39but she just didn't care. She promoted and promulgated her defamation on Facebook to print
00:45journalists in broadcast interviews and her defamation was repeated and circulated.
00:50In his closing address, the Senator's barrister Peter Gray took a shot at Mr Turner's credibility,
00:57saying he'd downplayed the impacts of the then-Council Chairman Matt Palmer's allegations,
01:02which were published prior to the Senators, and appeared in several media stories by the NT News
01:08and the ABC. Mr Gray submitted Mr Turner had likely not suffered any damage at all, but if he had it
01:15could be overwhelmingly attributed to the mass media coverage of Mr Palmer's claims.
01:21Mr Gray told the court Senator Numpajimpa Price had been agitating and advocating for more scrutiny
01:27on Aboriginal land councils for years, and her comments in 2024 weren't an individualised attack,
01:34but rather a continuation of her advocacy to gain traction on the issue.
01:39The claim that her real objective was to cause harm to one individual who she didn't name and had only
01:45ever met once is we submit fanciful. After several hours of submissions from both parties and seven
01:52days of evidence, Judge Michael Wheelahan reserving his decision.
Comments