Nine loses bid to keep settlement with Ben Roberts-Smith’s lover secret
Nine has lost her bid for a 50-year restraining order over a settlement reached by Ben Roberts-Smith over a dispute with his ex.
The 17th person who had an extramarital affair with Roberts-Smith was a witness. Age And Sydney Morning Herald in the former soldier’s unsuccessful libel suit against newspapers owned by Nine. His identity was concealed by the Federal Court.
Following the libel suit, Person 17 threatened to sue the newspapers and investigative journalist Nick McKenzie, one of the reporters at the center of the case.
In testimony during the trial, Person 17 claimed Roberts-Smith punched him on the left side of his face and eye in 2018. Roberts-Smith vehemently denied this claim, and then-Federal Court judge Anthony Besanko found that Person 17’s testimony was not reliable enough to prove the alleged assault.
However, Besanko found some of Roberts-Smith’s behavior towards Person 17 was “intimidating, threatening and controlling.”
With a decision on MondayFederal Court Judge Nye Perram said the information in the settlement document between Nine newspapers, McKenzie and Person 17 had already “entered the public domain in the form of a series of published news articles” in May last year.
Perram said the news articles “reveal the essence of the content of the settlement document.”
The judge said this meant granting a restraining order “would be useless”. He rejected the application for a suppression order and ordered Nine to pay Roberts-Smith’s legal costs.
Nine’s application was opposed by two media organisations, Nationwide News, owned by News Corp, and West Australian Newspapers, now owned by the Southern Cross media group following a merger with Seven West Media.
Kerry Stokes, the billionaire who bankrolled Roberts-Smith’s libel case, announced plans to step down as chairman of Seven West Media this month following the merger last year.
Perram said Nine “did not seek orders requiring these stories” [about the settlement with Person 17] will be removed and will likely have been viewed by a large number of people.”
“There is no evidence that these articles were published in contravention of the restraining orders.
“In fact, the chronology of events on April 30, 2025, as accurately presented by both media companies, makes it quite possible that the information in the articles had left the courtroom before the restraining orders were issued.”
Perram said the interim order preventing the release of the settlement document will expire in 14 days on February 16 unless special leave is applied for to challenge his orders.
If such an application had been made, the provisional order would have been extended pending any objections.
Besanko upheld the newspapers’ truth defense in the 2023 libel trial. According to the civil standard of evidence, Roberts-Smith complicit in the murder of four unarmed prisoners While deployed to Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
The High Court rejected Ben Roberts-Smith’s last-ditch bid to appeal against his defamation loss last year, bringing an end to a seven-year case costing tens of millions of dollars.
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