News Corp had no first-hand source suggesting Sam Groth’s wife underage at start of relationship, MP’s lawyer tells court | Victorian politics

A News Corp journalist had “not a single piece of information” that Victorian Liberal deputy leader Sam Groth began a relationship with his wife when she was underage, the MP’s lawyers told the court.

In what a federal court judge described as a “test case” for Australia’s new privacy laws, Groth and his wife Brittany are suing the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), reporter Stephen Drill and Herald Sun editor Sam Weir over a series of articles published in July.

The articles alleged the couple met at a tennis club in suburban Melbourne and began a sexual relationship when Brittany was 16 or 17 and Sam, then a professional player, was 23 or 24, and worked as her coach, the court heard.

Brittany Groth filed a lawsuit alleging serious invasion of privacy, while her husband claimed he was slandered by the articles.

HWT defends the reporting on public interest grounds, arguing that the allegations “could constitute a criminal offence” and could therefore be “weaponised” by Groth’s political opponents ahead of the 2026 Victorian state election.

The tabloid also argues that it is exempt from new privacy laws, which allow compensation of up to $478,000, because of immunity granted to journalists.

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But at a case management hearing in Melbourne on Thursday, the Groths’ lawyer Sue Chrysanthou SC argued the exemption did not apply.

“There are two elements to the defence. First, you have to be a journalist or the journalist’s employer, and then there has to be journalistic material,” Chrysanthou told the court.

He said the laws, which were part of pre-election bills late last year, were written in a way that “clearly parliament considers that all publications purporting to be news are not news”.

“We say that a proper assessment of this requires an understanding of all the information the journalist had when he made the decision and published that claim,” Chrysanthou said.

He told the court he would seek to cross-examine Drill during the trial and use the discovery to gain access to “all the information” he had at the time of publication.

“When they met my client, they were unable to obtain a single piece of information from anyone who had first-hand knowledge of the circumstances of her relationship,” Chrysanthou told the court.

“And [they lacked] “There is no basis or first-hand basis to allege that there is a reasonable allegation that my client, Mr. Groth, was involved in a crime when he first began his relationship with his current wife and the mother of his two young children.”

HWT’s lawyer, Matthew Collins KC, argued the articles were clearly news, noting that they appeared on the front page of Victoria’s highest-circulation newspaper and concerned “an aspiring person to be the state’s deputy premier”.

But Judge Shaun McElwaine noted that courts in the United States “have been grappling with privacy and the First Amendment for years.”

“There are limits to what is news and what is salacious gossip,” he said.

Collins wants a hearing to determine whether the journalism exemption applies, while Chrysanthou wants that question to be heard simultaneously with the hearing.

A separate hearing on the matter is set for Nov. 6.

McElwaine stated that as it was a “test case” and “the first of its kind” brought under new privacy laws, it was “inevitable” that any decision he made would be appealed, potentially leading to a prolonged trial.

It also set a two-week trial period for May 2026.