Adjudication No. 997 (September 1998)

The Australian Press Council has partly upheld a complaint by Julia Walkden against the Townsville Bulletin over a reference comparing her with corporate fugitive Christopher Skase in a bylined column of opinion.

Ms Walkden makes several complaints against the newspaper which emanate from long-running disputes she has had with the Townsville City Council (TCC) over development on Magnetic Island, the non payment of large court expenses when she lost a Supreme Court action against the TCC and the Townsville Bulletin's reporting of these matters.

In the Press Council's opinion, nearly all the reporting was fair reporting of local public issues or reasonable comment in a column obviously dedicated to vigorous comment on local matters.

But where the newspaper erred was in its reaction to a bylined column item on 29 June 1998 which said that Ms Walkden "has been finally nabbed" over the outstanding court costs. "Summonses were served last week soon after she arrived on [Magnetic] island, ending months of cat and mouse tactics that made Christopher Skase look amateurish," the column said.

Ms Walkden wrote to the paper protesting that, after twice initiating contact with the servers, she had in fact been served with the summons at her Brisbane home and that the reference to Skase was "extremely damaging to my reputation".

In the next column, on 6 July, the commentator corrected the detail about where the summons was served. But neither then nor later was the complainant given the chance to rebut the reference to Skase, based on the paper's belief that she had been elusive and the TCC had been unable to serve the summons over a period of several years.

The Press Council agrees that Mr Skase's avoidance of attempts to return him to Australia to face charges of corporate dishonesty has become so notorious that a comparison with him over "dodging" court orders could be extremely damaging.

There is conflicting evidence about Ms Walkden's addresses over the period when she was being sought for the summonses to be served and the Press Council is not in a position to test the evidence.

It does not need to. Under the Press Council principles it appears that while the newspaper was fair to the complainant over a long period, it did fail to provide an opportunity for her to dispute the serious, but contentious, accusation that she was Skase-like.

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