The ABC has been ordered to pay Antoinette Lattouf $70,000 after the Federal Court found she was sacked from her fill-in radio job over her political opinions on the Israel-Gaza war.
00:00I have found that the ABC contravened section 7721F of the Fair Work Act by terminating Ms Latouf's employment for reasons including that she held political opinions opposing the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
00:13The ABC dismissed Ms Latouf within the meaning of clause 54.4.1 by refusing to allow her to provide further service when it was obliged to do so under an implied term of the employment contract.
00:26It also dismissed Ms Latouf by terminating the contract of employment.
00:31The HRW report had already been the subject of a story on ABC News.
00:36The consternation of senior managers of the ABC turned into what can be described as a state of panic.
00:44Within the hour a decision was made that Ms Latouf would be taken off air.
00:49She was called into an office and informed that she had shared a post that could be considered controversial and had breached the ABC's policies.
00:58The policies she was alleged to have breached were not identified nor was she given any opportunity to defend herself against the allegations.
01:06I have no hesitation in accepting the evidence of those witnesses that their actions were not motivated to any extent by Ms Latouf's race or national extraction.
01:15In December 2023, I shared a Human Rights Watch post because Human Rights Watch found that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war in Gaza.
01:28It is now June 2025 and Palestinian children are still being starved.
01:33We see their images every day, emaciated, skeletal, scavenging through the rubble for scraps.
01:44This unspeakable suffering is not accidental.
01:47It is engineered.
01:50Deliberately starving and killing children is a war crime.
01:52Today the court has found that punishing someone for sharing facts about these war crimes is also legal.
