The names of members of a private WhatsApp chat used to allegedly lobby the ABC chair and managing director into sacking Antoinette Lattouf have been suppressed as a blockbuster trial in the Federal Court began on Monday morning.

Rebekah Giles, a high-profile defamation specialist, filed the application on Saturday in an attempt to keep the names of the members of the WhatsApp group “Lawyers for Israel” out of court. The application was approved.

Members of the group made attempts to lobby both former ABC chair Ita Buttrose and outgoing managing director David Anderson into sacking Lattouf in December 2023 while she was employed as a stand-in radio presenter on a five-day contract.

The revelations, revealed by this masthead in January last year, have formed an integral part of Lattouf’s wrongful dismissal case, which is being heard in the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday, the culmination of a near-14 month process.

Justice Darryl Rangiah approved the application, saying the parties only have “peripheral relevance” to the proceeding and that he was satisfied there is a substantial risk the parties would face vilification and harassment of their identities and contact details were made available to the public.

Anderson, who leaves the ABC at the beginning of March, is one of a number of high-profile witnesses set to appear, alongside the departed Buttrose and chief content officer Chris Oliver-Taylor, whom documents have shown made the call to remove Lattouf.

Anderson, Buttrose and Oliver-Taylor exchanged a flurry of emails in the days leading up to Lattouf’s dismissal on December 20, 2023, documents released by the Federal Court on Friday revealed, prompted by a number of direct complaints made after the fill-in presenter’s first show on air.

Lattouf’s team amended their initial statement of claim in October to reflect their claim both Anderson and Buttrose were key decision-makers in her sacking, after evidence relating to the trial was filed. The ABC has positioned Oliver-Taylor as the decision-maker, who claimed in correspondence that Lattouf had breached the ABC’s editorial policies.

Lattouf brought the case to the Fair Work Commission against the ABC arguing she was unlawfully terminated based on political opinion and/or race and that the decision to end her contract contravened the public broadcaster’s enterprise agreement.

She was taken off-air three days into a five-day contract to cover the ABC’s Sydney Radio Mornings show in December 2023 after she shared a Human Rights Watch post on Instagram with the caption “HRW reporting starvation as a tool of war”. In her Fair Work submission, Lattouf claimed the ABC said the post had breached its social media policies and cited it in its reasons for her dismissal.

Other ABC figures expected to appear include audio boss Ben Latimer, former ABC Radio Sydney manager Steve Ahern, and then-acting editorial director Simon Melkman.

In its response, the ABC called Lattouf’s claim “vague, embarrassing in the legal sense and liable to be struck out”, despite having made multiple attempts to settle the matter before it could be heard in court.

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