News Corp told by Liberal MP that allegations about Sam Groth and wife were ‘political hit job’, couple’s lawyers say | Victoria

The couple’s lawyers say a News Corp reporter failed to include the Victorian Liberal MP’s statement that allegations of his affair with the wife of the party’s deputy leader, Sam Groth, were “nothing more than a political assassination”.

The Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), reporter Stephen Drill and Herald Sun editor Sam Weir are being sued in federal court by Brittany Groth. new laws for serious breaches of privacy and for defamation over a series of articles published by Sam Groth in July.

According to court documents, the articles allege the couple met at a tennis club in suburban Melbourne and began a sexual relationship when Brittany was 16 or 17 and Sam was 23 or 24, and he worked as her coach.

News Corp newspaper confirmed it would use the public interest defense in its defense submitted to the federal court earlier this month, arguing the allegations may have been “weaponized” by Sam’s detractors in both the Liberal party and Labor ahead of the 2026 state election.

The tabloid also argued that its reporting was exempt from new privacy laws that allow compensation of up to $478,000 because of legal protections for journalists.

But in a response filed Wednesday, the Groths’ lawyers said HWT published “implausible conclusions based on, at best, gossip, hearsay and insufficient information” that no reasonable person or journalist could classify as news or public interest journalism.

They claim that on June 30, a month before the initial report was published, Drill contacted Brighton Liberal MP James Newbury to inform him that he was working on a story about “Sam and Brittany starting their relationship illegally because she was underage and he was her coach”.

According to the Groths’ lawyers, Newbury told Drill that he did not believe the allegations were true and would go on record as saying they were “nothing more than a political assassination from the party room, an unfounded, unfounded slander from the party room.”

However, Newbury’s statement was not included in the article.

Lawyers for the Groths said Newbury was referred to as “Confidential Source 6” in HWT’s defense and told Drill that “this story is not true.”

In its defence, HWT argued that this conversation was evidence that senior Liberal members were “already aware of the concerns that had been expressed about the circumstances in which Sam began a romantic relationship with Brittany”.

In its defence, HWT alleges that in late 2024 and mid-2025 there were concerns within the party about when the Groths’ relationship began, “the appropriateness of Sam beginning this relationship, whether Sam had committed a criminal offense in starting the relationship”.

The defense argued that there were fears that “such issues could be used as a weapon against the Liberal party by political opponents and whether Sam’s position as deputy leader of the Liberal party posed a risk or liability to the prospect of electoral success in any event”.

It was stated that HWT first received information in late 2024 from a “confidential source working in Victorian state politics” that there were concerns that Brittany was underage when the couple’s relationship began.

The defense also indicates that Herald Sun deputy editor Chris Tinkler was also involved in investigating the story; The documents state that on Dec. 17, Tinkler obtained from an anonymous source a Facebook photo showing Sam and Brittany attending a school formal as a couple in May 2012. He was 18 years old at the time.

The defense also includes photographs of the couple’s trip to Bali for Brittany’s 18th birthday in April 2012 and previous interviews with Herald Sun reporter Mitch Clarke on the Tennis Channel in 2017 and in July 2024; In both cases, the Groths said they met at a tennis club.

In the Herald Sun interview, Groth said he added Brittany as a Facebook friend immediately after meeting her.

The defense said Tinkler also spoke to a Labor Party source who said two MPs were aware Brittany was underage when her romantic relationship with Sam began and that in the source’s view “what she was doing was really inappropriate”.

The case is scheduled for an initial case management hearing in federal court on October 30.