Witness in Roberts-Smith case threatened to sue Nine, star reporter
A woman who gave evidence for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald as part of the newspapers' defence to Ben Roberts-Smith's multimillion-dollar defamation case later threatened to sue the mastheads and one of its top investigative reporters, a court has heard.
Nick McKenzie is the journalist at the centre of Roberts-Smith's defamation case against the Nine-owned media outlets over a series of articles accusing the former Special Air Service corporal of war crimes.
Roberts-Smith spectacularly lost the defamation case in 2023 after Federal Court Justice Anthony Besanko found he was complicit in the murder of four unarmed prisoners while he was deployed in Afghanistan.
He launched an appeal and had been awaiting the court's decision following a hearing last year.
Roberts-Smith applied to reopen his appeal in March after a 'secret recording' emerged of a phone call between McKenzie and a witness in the defamation trial, dubbed Person 17 to protect her identity. The conversation took place before Person 17, who had an extramarital affair with Roberts-Smith, gave evidence in the trial in 2022.
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Person 17 alleged during the trial that Roberts-Smith punched her on the left side of her face and eye at a hotel in Canberra after a dinner in Parliament House in 2018. Roberts-Smith vehemently rejected that allegation, and Besanko found Person 17's testimony was not sufficiently reliable to prove the alleged assault.
However, Besanko found some of Roberts-Smith's behaviour towards Person 17 was 'intimidatory, threatening and controlling'.
The Full Court of the Federal Court is hearing Roberts-Smith's application to reopen his appeal to introduce evidence relating to the recorded conversation over a two-day hearing that started in Sydney on Thursday.
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