The Australian apologises

02/10/2015

This morning The Australian has published an apology to Fiona Roughley (Legal Affairs, p27), together with an edited version of this statement (Letters to the Editor, p13) after publishing an article ("Inquiry delivers Jackson heads-up", 8/9/15, p1) about her conduct when she served as junior counsel assisting the trade union royal commission in 2014.

The article purported to quote and paraphrase a commission file note recording a conversation between Ms Kathy Jackson and Ms Roughley. The article quoted the file note as saying that she gave Ms Jackson "advice on thinking of specific examples to use in her defence". This was inaccurate. These words do not appear in the file note. The article said that Ms Roughley "coached" Ms Jackson and made "suggestions that she use her time on the stand to tackle media critics". This was also inaccurate. Ms Roughley was not given the opportunity to comment.

In addition to the apology, News Corp Australia has made a donation on her behalf to the Katrina Dawson Foundation.