The outspoken Liberal senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price pushed ahead with a media release that defamed an Aboriginal land council boss without checking the details were true, a court has heard.

Nampijinpa Price is fighting a claim by the Central Land Council chief executive, Lesley Turner, that she defamed him in the July 2024 press release.

Turner said the release falsely reported a no-confidence motion had been moved against him by council delegates.

A hearing of the case began on Monday in the federal court in Darwin before Justice Michael Wheelahan.

The Northern Territory senator’s release implied Turner had “behaved so unprofessionally that it warranted his dismissal” and was “unfit to continue to occupy the role of CEO”, according to Turner’s claim.

The high-profile defamation lawyer Sue Chrysanthou SC, acting for the land council boss, said Nampijinpa Price and her staff had “ploughed ahead” with the defamatory media statement.

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At issue was what happened at a land council delegates’ meeting prior to the press release being issued, the court was told.

Gavin Morris, then a headmaster at an Aboriginal school in Alice Springs, was one of the senator’s “trusted sources” and had been a “meddler” in the whole affair because he wanted her client’s job, Chrysanthou said.

Morris allegedly helped draft a media release for the land council chair Matthew Palmer saying delegates had voted on a no-confidence motion against Turner, the court heard.

The Palmer release said the “majority of Central Land Council members showed their support for the dismissal of the CEO due to unprofessional conduct”.

The assertions were published by the NT News in an article titled “No confidence motion against Lesley Turner defeated”.

The newspaper later pulled the article and issued an apology.

Nampijinpa Price and her staff failed to question inconsistencies in the Palmer press release or confirm matters with sources, but went ahead with their own release that defamed her client, Chrysanthou said.

When it became clear there was no vote of no confidence, the senator refused to accept that publicly and her “failure to act increased my client’s hurt”, she said.

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“To this day Senator Price has never publicly admitted that what she said was wrong … she’s never made an apology for it,” Chrysanthou said.

“The senator ploughed ahead and gave the thumbs up for her staff to publish the press release.

“Instead of checking what happened, she didn’t care what was true.”

Chrysanthou noted the senator had removed a truth defence to the defamation action in March without an accompanying apology.

The senator is instead seeking to rely on a defence of qualified privilege, saying her conduct in publishing the media release was “reasonable in the circumstances”.

The defamation hearing has been set down for seven days.