ABC quietly settled Chinese student’s defamation case

• Exclusive

  Deborah Cornwall

  Journalist

  @deborahcornwall

  
• 12:00AM March 11, 2019

A 2017 ABC Four Corners program that claimed to have uncovered “a tale of secrets, power and intimidation” by the Chinese Communist Party in Australia so incensed Chinese-Australian billionaire Chau Chak Wing that he promptly sued the national broadcaster for defamation.

While Mr Chau is still waiting for a hearing date in the Federal Court, The Australian has uncovered another defamation action taken out over the same story, which was settled by the ABC in a confidential agreement.

In a statement of claim filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria in November 2017, 22-year-old Chinese university student Lupin Lu claimed the Four Corners story, Power and Influence: The hard edge of China’s soft power, had been “recklessly indifferent to the truth”, slandered her as a Chinese spy and “severely injured her reputation” by suggesting she had been reporting fellow students involved in anti-Communist Party protests to the Australian Chinese embassy.

Ms Lu, who was president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at Canberra University at the time, alleged the ABC had set out to “lure’’ her into doing an interview, claiming it was “doing a news story about Chinese and Australian relations and wanted to know more about the perspective of Chinese students living in Australia”.

In her claim, she said despite her limited grasp of English, Four Corners didn’t provide her with an interpreter during her interview with journalist Nick McKenzie. She alleged her answers had later been edited “out of context ... to give the misleading impression” she was involved in a push by the Chinese Communist Party to secretly “infiltrate the Australian political process”.

The Four Corners story, which first went to air on June 5, 2017, was part of a joint investigation between the ABC and Fairfax Media, now owned by Nine.

Ms Lu said the allegations against her had been repeated in online articles published by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, along with video excerpts of Ms Lu’s Four Corner’s interview, which were posted on the two media companies’ Twitter and Facebook pages under the heading: “The Chinese Communist Party is waging a covert campaign of influence in Australia — an aggressive form of ‘soft power’ — and while loyalists are rewarded, dissidents live in fear”.

The posts triggered a stream of online abuse against Ms Lu, including calls for her to be “deported from Australia”, along with accusations she was a “Chinese spy” who wanted to “take over the world” and a liar who had behaved “shamefully”.

Ms Lu’s lawyers first complained to the ABC and Fairfax on June 20, 2017, warning that the story had put the young student’s mental health at risk and endangered her physical safety.

According to Ms Lu’s statement of claim, her lawyers also demanded an apology from the media companies, which was refused.

Five months later, Melbourne solicitors Advocate Me filed a defamation action in the Victorian Supreme Court, prompting both media outlets to reach an out-of-court settlement with Ms Lu within weeks. The ABC and Nine declined to comment yesterday on the grounds it would breach confidentiality obligations over the settlement.

However, an editor’s note attached to the Four Corners transcript of the story now has the rider: “It was not the intention of the ABC to suggest that Ms Lu was a spy or a person who would deliberately cause harm to other students.”

Former NSW Labor premier and foreign minister Bob Carr told The Australian yesterday the Four Corners story reflected a “serious and worrying” trend in the way the media was reporting on China.

Mr Carr, who is also director of the Australia-China Relations Institute, said: “A certain way of reporting on the Chinese community has taken hold within sections of the media. It can only be described as group think and China panic.”

Mr Chau’s defamation action over the Four Corners story and the accompanying online articles by Nine, is due back in the NSW Federal Court for a brief mention on March 22. The media companies hit a major hurdle in August last year after judge Stephen Rares threw out their main truth defence, dismissing their attempt to rely on a parliamentary speech given by federal Liberal MP Andrew Hastie in May 2018 as “embarrassing”.

The ABC and Nine have appealed the decision, and are now awaiting judgment from the Full Court of the Federal Court.

Nine and the ABC flagged to the Full Court last week they now planned to mount a new truth defence based on critical new evidence.

The Australian has been told Four Corners is currently working on another investigation into China’s network of influence in Australian politics.