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Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.

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Speaker 1: It's Thursday, January eighth, twenty twenty sixth a deeply moving

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Speaker 1: funeral in Sydney for Peter Marr, a long serving former

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Speaker 1: New South Wales police detective who was shot in December

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Speaker 1: fourteen's Bond Eye terror attack. Mar's brother David said the

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Speaker 1: response to the attack must address both anti Semitism and guns,

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Speaker 1: questioning whether new state laws that allow owners to have

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Speaker 1: up to four firearms have gone far enough. Aaron Patterson,

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Speaker 1: the mushroom murderer, has always denied deliberately poisoning four elderly relatives,

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Speaker 1: and she's indicated she will appeal her conviction on three

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Speaker 1: counts of murder and one of attempted murder. Patterson's trial

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Speaker 1: captured international attention and cast a light on Australia that

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Speaker 1: wasn't particularly flattering.

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Speaker 2: Today.

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Speaker 1: The Australian's Ellie Dudley joins me to look ahead to

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Speaker 1: Patterson's appeal and her life behind bars.

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Speaker 3: I am satisfied that by the sixteenth of July twenty three,

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Speaker 3: when you unusually invited Simon, his parents and his aunt

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Speaker 3: and uncle to a lunch without the children to discuss

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Speaker 3: your nonexistent medical issues. You did so with the intention

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Speaker 3: of killing them all. You maintain your innocence. In other words,

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Speaker 3: there is no evidence of remorse. You showed no pity

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Speaker 3: for your victims.

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Speaker 1: That was just as Christopher Bale of the Victorian Supreme

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Speaker 1: Court sentencing Aaron Patterson after she was found by a

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Speaker 1: jury to have murdered three elderly relatives and attempted to

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Speaker 1: murder a fourth in what the judge found was an

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Speaker 1: attempt to also kill her husband Simon. Now Patterson is

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Speaker 1: in Victoria's toughest women's prison working on her appeal.

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Speaker 3: All sentences are to be served concurrently. The total effective

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Speaker 3: sentence is life imprisonment and I fix a non parole

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Speaker 3: period of thirty three years.

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Speaker 1: No one knows the story of Aaron Patterson better than

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Speaker 1: The Australian's Elie Dudley. Ellie, you were in court for

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Speaker 1: every minute of her trial. You might be in court

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Speaker 1: for every minute of her appeal, if and when it

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Speaker 1: makes it to court. As the year came to a close,

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Speaker 1: what were you thinking about the whole Aeron Patterson story.

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Speaker 4: Well, she's in prison now, she's likely going to be

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Speaker 4: imprisoned for the rest of her life, and then.

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Speaker 2: What she left.

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Speaker 4: She's left in her wake, a family that's been completely

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Speaker 4: torn apart. Often with these stories, while this one in

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Speaker 4: particular had such a humongous impact on Australia and globally

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Speaker 4: it garnered so much attention, There's a family that's sitting

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Speaker 4: there now trying to rebuild their lives, not least having

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Speaker 4: lost three members of their family, but also having this

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Speaker 4: media storm around them that has completely torn up their lives.

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Speaker 4: They've had a trial, now, they've still got an appeal

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Speaker 4: to come. How do you move on from that? I

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Speaker 4: think those are the things that are going through my brain.

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Speaker 1: During the trial and in various victim impact statements after

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Speaker 1: the verdict, in fact, the family spoke quite emotionally about

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Speaker 1: the impact that the publicity had had on them. They

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Speaker 1: talked about not liking the fact that journalists were in

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Speaker 1: their local cafe, that journalists knocked on their doors. But

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Speaker 1: up close to that story in more world during the

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Speaker 1: trial and around Lee and Getha, did you get a

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Speaker 1: sense that they were actually being harassed by journalists?

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Speaker 4: I didn't get the sense of that at all during

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Speaker 4: the trial. There's something quite surreal about going to the

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Speaker 4: local cafe right near the court and getting your bacon

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Speaker 4: and egg roll before you go into court that day,

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Speaker 4: and Ian Wilkinson is there in line in front of you.

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Speaker 2: I don't think I ever saw a journalist approach him.

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Speaker 4: You know, whether or not they were journalists who were

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Speaker 4: rocking up to their homes at other times or trying

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Speaker 4: to get comments from them in the wake of the sentence,

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Speaker 4: that's an entirely different thing. But I would say the

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Speaker 4: journalists were incredibly respectful of the justice process in that

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Speaker 4: and also the morning process of the people involved closely

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Speaker 4: involved in this tragedy, in not overstepping.

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Speaker 1: As always in trials, there's a huge period of suspense

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Speaker 1: and of not knowing and of wondering how the verdict

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Speaker 1: is going to go. And then once you have a verdict,

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Speaker 1: you only get a very short time to sort of

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Speaker 1: clap eyes on the accused and try to understand how

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Speaker 1: they've processed it and regard them, in her case as

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Speaker 1: now a convicted murderer. When she returned to court for

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Speaker 1: sentence hearings and then ultimately for sentence, how are you

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Speaker 1: thinking about Aaron Patterson now that she is of course convicted.

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Speaker 4: I think that when covering the trials, seeing her sitting

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Speaker 4: up the back of the courtroom in her very maternal

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Speaker 4: looking blouses, and she just sort of looks like a

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Speaker 4: mum who stumbled into court and somehow is sitting behind

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Speaker 4: a pane of glass at the back of the courtroom with.

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Speaker 2: Guards either side of her right.

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Speaker 4: But then you see her rock up to court being

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Speaker 4: transported in the back of a prison van after she's

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Speaker 4: been convicted, being handled by prison guards. She's clamped with handcuffs,

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Speaker 4: and then she's coming in and there's something all of

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Speaker 4: a sudden, there's this sinister side to her, where this

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Speaker 4: woman who appears to be so unassuming and just a

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Speaker 4: suburban housewife from the Gippsland region of Victoria, all of

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Speaker 4: a sudden you think this woman is a mass murderer.

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Speaker 4: This woman planned an incredibly deliberate, sinister attack on people

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Speaker 4: that had done nothing but treat her with kindness. The

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Speaker 4: point was repeatedly made when victim impact statements were delivered

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Speaker 4: at sentencing and also when commentary was given by the

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Speaker 4: judge when he was sentencing Aaron Patterson.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, she's a serious violent offender. Of course, she has

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Speaker 1: always denied any wrongdoing. She's now indicated her intention to appeal.

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Speaker 1: Now the courts have to consider whether an appeal will

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Speaker 1: actually be heard. She feels to me like someone who

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Speaker 1: would take this all the way to the High Court.

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Speaker 1: She's not going to give up, is she.

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Speaker 4: She's not because she's got nothing to lose. She's got

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Speaker 4: a lot of money. We heard that throughout the trial.

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Speaker 4: She got an inheritance from her mother and from her

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Speaker 4: grandmother as well. And what's the alternative, Right she's in prison.

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Speaker 4: Either she's going to be in prison for the rest

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Speaker 4: of our life, or she can try and fight it

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Speaker 4: and try and get out when she does appeal, and

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Speaker 4: she has indicated that she will. What sort of interest

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Speaker 4: do you think will be garnered from the public in

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Speaker 4: that or do you think that you know, are we

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Speaker 4: done with Aaron patterson saga?

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Speaker 2: Done caring?

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Speaker 1: I think people have got an endless appetite for this story.

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Speaker 1: But what I find really troubling is why they're so

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Speaker 1: interested in it. And I've felt very conflicted about the

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Speaker 1: kind of entertainment nature of this trial. Of course, we

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Speaker 1: covered it in huge depth. You blogged every day and

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Speaker 1: wrote stories. We covered it here on the front every day.

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Speaker 1: We've made a lot of videos about it, and we

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Speaker 1: know that people are really interested. But I don't want

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Speaker 1: to sound too judgmental of the audience, but I do

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Speaker 1: feel as though these crimes were not really being taken

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Speaker 1: that seriously. It was kind of like, Wow, look at

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Speaker 1: what these quirky hobbits are doing in country Victoria. They're

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Speaker 1: poisoning each other with mushrooms, you know how crazy. In fact,

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Speaker 1: this is just the most disgusting, in my view, domestic

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Speaker 1: violence of ending you could possibly imagine. And I don't

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Speaker 1: think we would have any trouble discerning that if she

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Speaker 1: was male, and if the weapon had been a knife

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Speaker 1: or a gun instead of a beef Wellington.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 4: I think that that's going back to what the family

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Speaker 4: were saying, right, is that the whole thing became a

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Speaker 4: pantomime of their lives where all of a sudden they

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Speaker 4: were thrust into the spotlight. While I was in more Well,

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Speaker 4: there was a weekend that I spent in Melbourne and

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Speaker 4: I went to a stand up comedy show and it

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Speaker 4: was in the middle of a trial, and a guy

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Speaker 4: stood up and made a series of jokes about what

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Speaker 4: was going on at the beef Wellington trial two hours away,

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Speaker 4: a at risk of contempt of court, which I was

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Speaker 4: just sitting in the audience, going, mate, sit down.

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Speaker 2: We're not allowed to do this, but also.

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Speaker 4: Completely rejecting the fact that there is a family in

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Speaker 4: the middle of this, a family that is experiencing a really,

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Speaker 4: really terrible tragedy. And there's a big question for us

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Speaker 4: as a media organization, how do you balance the extreme

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Speaker 4: public interest in this? And we know obviously criminal trials

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Speaker 4: of this scale are firmly in the public interest, and

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Speaker 4: I think that.

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Speaker 2: Our coverage of it was justified.

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Speaker 4: But how do you balance that with when the interest

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Speaker 4: is coming from a place of intense glee, most in

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Speaker 4: the nature which these crimes were committed. I actually don't

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Speaker 4: know the answer.

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Speaker 2: Coming up.

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Speaker 1: Why don't the courts take social media contempt more seriously?

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Speaker 1: I hate saying this because I'm generally an advocate for

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Speaker 1: more openness in our justice system, but it does make

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Speaker 1: me glad that our courts are not televised, because otherwise

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Speaker 1: it would have been like the Amber and Johnny trial.

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Speaker 1: You know, people making tiktoks every day about what so

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Speaker 1: and so had said in the witness box, making fun

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Speaker 1: of people you know that would have been even worse.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it would have been even worse. That judge in

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Speaker 4: this case was really clamping down on media organizations or

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Speaker 4: not even media organizations, influencers or whoever who were posting

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Speaker 4: contemptuous material on TikTok or Instagram or whatever it was

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Speaker 4: commenting on the case. The way that the trial was

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Speaker 4: reported was very restricted, and I think that that's a

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Speaker 4: good thing because it hopefully doesn't, you know, become this

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Speaker 4: huge opinion fest in the middle of a trial, and

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Speaker 4: to the positive impact that that can have.

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Speaker 2: On a family.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I actually, again may seriously regret saying this, but

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Speaker 1: I want the cours to throw the book at people

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Speaker 1: who commit a contempt We see, and I've seen now

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Speaker 1: in probably ten trials since the social media age began,

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Speaker 1: judges getting very angry and saying so on So I

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Speaker 1: shouldn't have put this on YouTube, or you shouldn't be

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Speaker 1: saying that on Twitter, or you shouldn't say that on

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Speaker 1: the radio or on your podcast. But then there are

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Speaker 1: no consequences. Someone writes a groveling letter of apology, they

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Speaker 1: never actually get charged with contemptive court, and that means

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Speaker 1: there are no consequences. People on TikTok are not even

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Speaker 1: aware that there are any rules, and.

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Speaker 4: I think that it's frustrating sometimes as a legacy media organization,

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Speaker 4: we know the rules. You know. I've been in court

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Speaker 4: enough times to know the rules around what I'm allowed

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Speaker 4: to report and what I'm not allowed to report.

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Speaker 2: It's frustrating seeing.

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Speaker 4: Rogue units go through and say whatever they would like

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Speaker 4: to say online because they don't know the law, and

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Speaker 4: then you know, being called out in front of a

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Speaker 4: judge and saying that somehow their excuses were sorry I

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Speaker 4: didn't know.

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Speaker 2: Well, it's not good enough in my opinion.

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Speaker 1: I agree Ellie, I with dread look forward to the appeal.

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Speaker 2: Thanks for joining us, Thank you for having me.

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Speaker 1: Ellie Dudley is The Australian's National Chief of Staff and

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Speaker 1: covered every day of Aaron Patterson's trial in her former

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Speaker 1: role as Legal affairs correspondent. The best coverage of courts

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Speaker 1: and the law is on all the time at the

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Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au