ABC News Journalist Olivana Louthouris breaks down the closing arguments in the defamation trial of NT Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price which has now wrapped up in the Federal Court with the judge reserving his judgment, adding that the Senator managed to stump up the funds to avoid bankruptcy

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now we know that the defamation trial of Northern Territory
Senator just into Namba jimper Price. It has wrapped up
in the Federal court after several days.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Now.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
She's being sued by the Central Land Council's Chief Executive,
Leslie Turner, over defamation claims. Mister Turner alleges that miss
Price damaged his reputation by well sending a press release
to more than one thousand journalists wrongly claiming he was
unfit for the role and should be dismissed. ABC News
journalist Olivana Luthurus has been covering this very closely and

(00:34):
joins me on the line. Good morning to you, Ollie.

Speaker 2 (00:38):
Good morning Katie.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Lovely to have you on the show. Now, I know
that the senator is accused of failing to check the
truth of her claims. Talk us through what's played out
over the last week or so.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Yeah, it's been a really sort of in depth and
somewhat complex civil trial in the Federal Court in Darwin,
with her from many different witnesses, including staff members from
the Central Land Council, media advisors, former media advisors of
Senator Number jimper Price. And of course we heard plenty

(01:11):
of evidence from Leslie Turner, the chief executive of the
Central Land Council who's bringing this claim, as well as
the Senator herself. Both of those people spent about two
days each being cross examined in the witness box by
the various lawyers involved. So yeah, really sort of dramatic
and complex proceeding.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
It sounds like it has been. And certainly watching the
coverage as well that you've done over the last week
or so, it seems that way. I mean, the closing addresses,
they were heard from both sides, as I understand it, yesterday,
What were the points that sort of stood out?

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Yeah, absolutely, So we'd heard about a couple of hours
of closing addresses from both the various parties, and I
suppose from Leslie Turner's lawyer, through Chrisanto, who's a very
well known defamation barrister. She sort of, you know, she
said things like the fact that the Senator had sought
to tarnish mister Turner's otherwise exemplary reputation. She said that,

(02:12):
you know, the Senator had succeeded in doing that, that
she'd essentially failed to verify and check the information that
she was you know, putting out in that media release
and that you know, she really should have taken extra
steps to to sort of do so. This media release
that went out to almost two thousand journalists included claims
that the mister Turner was no longer fit to be

(02:35):
in the role. It repeated claims made by the Council's
ben chairman, Matthew Palmer that the that the CEO had
faced in no confidence motion. Essentially, what we heard from
mister Turner's lawyer yesterday was that that motion never even happened.
From the senator's lawyer yesterday, Peter Gray, he essentially said

(02:57):
that this wasn't an individual to attack on mister Turner,
that the Senator has been campaigning and advocating for focus
on Aboriginal Land councils for many years and her involvement
or her comments in twenty twenty four were really just
a continuation of that, and also that it wasn't her
release that damaged mister Turner's reputation. It was actually all

(03:19):
of the media coverage that was really just repeating matt
Palmer's claims instead of the Senators.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Now I understand the judges reserve the decision. Now, where
do we go from here, like, what are the next steps?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, So the judge yesterday, Michael Wheelahan, he essentially said
that he needed to take some time to come to
a sort of thoughtful decision on all of the evidence
that he's heard over the last seven days. The parties
are going to get a little bit of extra time
to do written submissions. So that just essentially means more
of the same sort of summing up of their case

(03:53):
and submissions to the judge. It means we just don't
have to sit in court and listen to hours and
hours of probably very complex legal argument. But yeah, probably
another at least a couple of weeks or months before
we get a decision.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yeah. Right, And Ollie, is there much idea what kind
of impact this case could have on the senator's role?
I guess it's hard to tell until we've got that outcome.

Speaker 2 (04:13):
Yeah, it's an interesting question because this is something that
came up in the media prior to the trial actually
making it to court. I mean, Just Enterprise put out
a public call for crowdfunding essentially to be able to
fund this legal proceeding against her, and of course there
was serious you know, there was concerns that she was

(04:34):
going to go bankrupt, but you know, she managed to
stump up the funds to sort of go through with this.
We don't know how much mister Turner is going to
be seeking in damages if he's successful, and of course
there's plenty of legal costs to go with this, so yeah,
I guess it just remains to be seen.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
Well, Oliva Lasuris, We're all going to be watching very closely.
I always appreciate your time. Thanks so much for joining
us on the show this morning.

Speaker 2 (05:01):
It's always a pleasure.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
Thank you, thank you, thanks so much.