A News Corp journalist had “not one piece of information” indicating deputy Victorian Liberal leader Sam Groth began a relationship with his wife while she was underage, the MP’s lawyers told a federal court on Thursday.
Groth and his wife, Brittany, have launched proceedings against the Herald and Weekly Times (HWT), reporter Stephen Drill and Herald Sun editor Sam Weir over a series of articles published in July. The couple say the pieces — which claimed they met at a suburban Melbourne tennis club and that a sexual relationship began when Brittany was 16 or 17 and Groth, then a professional player and her coach, was 23 or 24 — amounted to a serious invasion of privacy and, in Groth’s case, defamation.
Brittany Groth seeks damages under Australia’s new privacy laws, which provide for awards of up to $478,000. HWT denies wrongdoing and says the reporting was in the public interest, arguing the allegations could amount to criminal conduct and therefore might be weaponised by political opponents ahead of the 2026 Victorian state election. The publisher also asserts a journalist exemption under the new privacy legislation.
At a case management hearing in Melbourne, the Groths’ barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, challenged that exemption. She told the court the statutory defence requires not only that the defendant be a journalist or employer of a journalist, but that the material be genuinely journalistic. Parliament, she said, intended to draw a line between legitimate news and publications that merely purport to be news.
Chrysanthou said the court needed to consider all information the journalist had when deciding to publish. She told the judge she intends to cross-examine Drill at trial and seek discovery of “all of the information” he relied on. “They had not one piece of information from any person who had any first‑hand information about the circumstances of my client’s relationship when they met,” she said, adding there was no first‑hand basis to suggest Mr Groth was committing a crime when the relationship began.
HWT’s lead counsel, Matthew Collins KC, countered that the articles were plainly newsworthy: they ran on the front page of Victoria’s highest‑circulation newspaper and concerned a figure who aspires to be deputy premier. He is seeking a preliminary hearing to determine whether the journalistic exemption applies.
Federal Court Judge Shaun McElwaine observed the case raises difficult questions about privacy law and press freedom that courts in the United States have long wrestled with. “There are limits to what is news and what is salacious gossip,” he said.
Chrysanthou urged the exemption question be decided at the same time as the trial; Collins wants a separate hearing. A hearing on that issue has been listed for 6 November. McElwaine noted this matter is likely to be appealed whatever conclusion he reaches, saying the case is the first of its kind under the new privacy regime and an appeal is probably inevitable.
The judge also set a two‑week trial for May 2026.
