The FHA Blog

The trial of biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s Supreme Court defamation action over a 1995 ABC-TV Four Corners program was adjourned today for two months.

Originally scheduled to finish by Easter, the hearing has run longer than expected and Justice David Kirby today set aside a further two weeks in late June and early July to hear the balance of the evidence.

The trial is scheduled to resume on 25 June 2007.

The Foundation for Humanity’s Adulthood CEO Sam Belfield today concluded a long and challenging period of cross-examination, ten days after first entering the witness box in biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s defamation trial against the ABC.

During four days of cross-examination from counsel for the defendants, Bret Walker SC, which finished this afternoon, Mr Belfield endured intense scrutiny of his two decades of involvement in the FHA. This preceded a brief re-examination by counsel for the plaintiffs, Kieran Smark.

Over the course of his testimony, Mr Belfield traversed a myriad of issues from how his interest in Mr Griffith’s biological treatise developed in the early 1990s, how his involvement in the FHA deepened, how the Four Corners program came about and the fall-out that followed, to his current role as FHA CEO and personal effects he experienced along the way.

In particular, he was pressed at length about the cause of his estrangement from his parents, Charles and Gillian Belfield, who had been highly critical of their son’s involvement in the FHA in an interview contained in the Four Corners program. Under persistent cross-examination by Mr Walker, Mr Belfield repeatedly refuted that he had written to his father in a hostile and disrespectful fashion on account of his father disagreeing with Mr Griffith’s ideas.

In the course of re-examination this afternoon, Mr Smark asked Mr Belfield to explain why he had written to his father as he had. Mr Belfield said there were a number of aspects, including a conversation he had with his father following the Four Corners program, in which his father gave “an ultimatum that he was going to sell his soul to destroy the Foundation”.

“In the period shortly thereafter, my father made what, in my view, were shocking allegations of a personal nature about Jeremy Griffith, and in fact, other directors of the Foundation … he also made allegations to me about my relationship with [my girlfriend] Susan”, Mr Belfield added.

Mr Belfield then recounted how, in late 1995, he refused his father’s request to cease working for the FHA.

“In the conversation that ensued, I was provided with what I understood to be a legal document and I was asked, in the light of my decision not to cease working for the Foundation, to sign that which would have the effect of excluding me from any right or entitlement to the family enterprise. Although being very upset, I acceded to doing that”, Mr Belfield said.

The Court heard how he tried to raise the issue again with this parents the following year, in April 1996.

“I said to my mother at that time, ‘I think we need to talk about what’s happened in 1995’. A lot of things were said and done that I felt we needed to work through. Raising that issue had the effect of precipitating a letter from my father shortly thereafter where, amongst other things, he said to the effect, ‘I’m going to have to purge all things to do with the Foundation from our lives and so long as you’re a part of the Foundation, we don’t wish to be involved with you so long as that remains the case,’ ”, Mr Belfield recounted.

After Mr Belfield’s evidence finished, the plaintiffs called Sandy Cullen-Ward, mother of FHA members Emma, 33, and Fiona, 31, who outlined how she supported her daughters’ interest in Mr Griffith’s ideas, which began in the early 1990s.

Mrs Cullen-Ward said her daughters’ involvement in the FHA had been beneficial to them and described how she and her husband held an FHA open day at their home in Brisbane in 1994, attended by almost 100 people with an interest in its work.

She went on to explain how, prior to the defamatory Four Corners broadcast, she became one of the signatories to an open letter that was sent by a group of parents of FHA members to Brian Johns, then Managing Director of the ABC.

“Having recently read a transcript of a radio interview with Dr Millikan, we, as concerned parents, wanted to just let Mr Johns know that we were most unhappy with the way the program was being put together and the way Dr Millikan was presenting his ideas,” Mrs Cullen-Ward told the Court.

A copy of the 18 April 1995 letter to Mr Johns tendered to the Court set out the parents’ concerns:

“In the radio interview, Dr Millikan claims that “…he (Jeremy Griffith) is surrounded by parents and families who are really quite distressed.” We are writing to tell you that there are many more parents who are either supportive or tolerant.

“If the views expressed by Dr Millikan in the radio program are an indication of what the Four Corners program is about then we strongly object to this mish-mash of half truths and prejudices being put forward as serious investigative journalism. It is an affront to the proud history of the ABC and a slur on the directors and members of the FHA.

“We ask you to look at the program and satisfy yourself of its truthfulness and balance”, the letter concluded.

The case continues tomorrow in the Supreme Court.

“Today will be a film day”, said counsel for the plaintiffs Kieran Smark as he introduced the 18th day of biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s defamation trial against the ABC and Reverend David Millikan.

At the request of the defendants, the Court was shown an audio-visual presentation prepared by the plaintiffs prior to the defamatory Four Corners program going to air in April 1995 that featured Mr Griffith expressing his concerns about the pending broadcast:

“We haven’t seen the program yet, we’ve been told though that it’s a bucket-job, by people working inside the ABC, on a new religious sect, that’s the way we’ve been described…”

“The program is coming to air in a couple of weeks and we fear the worst. It is going to be the insensitive, superficial treatment that we went to great lengths to try to make sure it wouldn’t be. We were deceived by Dr Millikan we feel.”

In the video presentation, Mr Griffith went on to discuss the history of new ideas and the background to the program:

“Galileo, when he said that the world was not the centre of the universe, had to live under house arrest for the rest of his life…”

“Teilhard de Chardin was excommunicated from his Jesuit faith at one stage for daring to try to interpret religious truths and Darwin’s idea of natural selection was nearly stopped because in the famous debate in 1860 at Oxford Bishop Wilberforce stood up and…said Darwin’s views were ‘contrary to the revelations of God in the scriptures’.”

“The story of the journey of human ideas is in fact the story of entrenched resistance, the old paradigm resisting the new.”

“And the Foundation believes that it is now in the grips of the equivalent of a Bishop Wilberforce who finds these ideas untenable, an anathema and now that we’ve found Dr Millikan’s article from a year ago in National Outlook [it] reveals just how deep his animosity towards these understandings are, and how great therefore is his deception”, Mr Griffith was seen saying.

Earlier in the day, the Court heard a 2BL Radio interview with the late Andrew Olle, broadcast the day after Four Corners aired, featuring the University of Auckland’s Emeritus Professor of Zoology John Morton giving an outline of Mr Griffith’s work:

“It’s about man’s biological future as it must relate to religion. It’s got overtones of Teilhard [de Chardin] and goes back as old I suppose as William Blake and Wordsworth. What is it? Its message is that mankind has lost some of his primal innocence on this planet. We’ve become over, perhaps two million years of evolution, an intellectual, technological, acquisitive, mischievous, inspired sometimes species. We’ve lost the old intuitive and emotional oneness with the non-human created world…”

“I believe Jeremy is making a prophetic utterance … I don’t think that we should too often use the word prophet for a fallible human being but make no mistake there is seriousness and there’s a substratum of truth in the book Beyond The Human Condition. I would recommend that listeners read it”, the Court heard Professor Morton saying.

These recordings were among a range of audio and video material played today before Justice David Kirby relating to the defamatory Four Corners program first broadcast on ABC-TV on 24 April 1995.

The case continues in the Supreme Court tomorrow.

The well-known author of The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers Professor Tim Flannery gave evidence today in biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape’s Supreme Court defamation trial against the ABC and Reverend David Millikan.

Under cross-examination by counsel for the plaintiffs Kieran Smark, Professor Flannery, who featured briefly in the defamatory Four Corners broadcast in 1995, told the Court of several conversations he had with the program’s guest producer Reverend Millikan prior to being interviewed.

When asked whether Reverend Millikan had told him that Mr Griffith “was acting like a cult leader”, Professor Flannery said while his memory was poor, “I believe words to that effect would have been uttered”.

Professor Flannery agreed that such an allegation would have had an “unconscious effect” on him noting that, “my trust that investigative journalism was at the heart of the process would have reassured me or given some validity to the process”.

However, he added “I am afraid to say that my faith in the idea that investigative journalism is very close to the heart of the employees at Four Corners has not been borne out”.

He also agreed he was relying upon Four Corners to present to the public a “fair and balanced report” of Mr Griffith’s work when he participated in the broadcast.

This preceded an exchange between he and Mr Smark about the emergence of Dr Alfred Wegener’s now famous theory of continental drift that was met with indifference and derision by the scientific community when introduced in the 1920s.

Professor Flannery acknowledged how Dr Wegener drew from beyond his particular disciplines to develop a synthesis that suggested a new way of looking at how the world works, a “paradigm shift” in science.

The professor went on to outline the differences between the holistic and reductionist approaches in science, discussing how his use of a holistic approach could be seen in his 2005 book The Weather Makers and the significance of what he called the “top down approach”.

“[This holistic] group of scientists are interested in broader questions, multidisciplinary questions, such as evolutionary history or climate. And for that group the reductionist’s approach doesn’t have the power, I think, to produce profitable and useful hypotheses in understanding,” he said.

“[You] look across the data as a whole rather than try to burrow into any one piece of it in any detail. You look across the data to try and comprehend the nature of these very complex systems…the reductionist approach is limited when it comes to comprehending very complex systems.”

“The human brain has been argued to be the most complex single piece of matter in the known universe,” he concluded.

Following Professor Flannery, the Court heard evidence from the FHA’s CEO Sam Belfield for the balance of the day.

The case continues tomorrow in the NSW Supreme Court.

Several prominent Australians provided character statements for biologist Jeremy Griffith and mountaineer Tim Macartney-Snape as their defamation trial against the ABC rolled into its 16th hearing day.

Statements from Cranbrook School headmaster Jeremy Madin, Fred Hollows Foundation director Gabi Hollows and Everest mountaineer Michael Groom were among five tendered today relating to the plaintiffs, their reputations and the damage caused by the 1995 Four Corners program.

In his statement, Mr Madin described how he first got to know Mr Griffith when they attended Geelong Grammar School together and during hikes at Corio, Timbertop and in Tasmania.

“He was a person who had an extraordinarily inquiring mind who had a particular interest in natural sciences. He was always keen to explore, he didn’t necessarily accept the received wisdom – he was keen to figure things out himself”, Mr Madin stated.

“Jeremy Griffith has a reputation of being honest about his beliefs, he is thoughtful, he pushes the boundaries and he raises interesting ideas – whether or not you agree with them.

“When I heard about the Four Corners programme I was surprised that someone was impugning his reputation … I have never, apart from the Four Corners programme, heard an impugning thing said about Jeremy.”

The Cranbrook headmaster said Mr Griffith is “considered to be of fine character” within the circles he moved and he marvelled at the biologist’s determination, citing his five year search for the Tasmanian Tiger or Thylacine which began in the late 1960s.

A witness statement was also filed by Mr Griffith’s long time friend, Queensland-based property developer Ian ‘Rare’ Russell, in which he described how the two became friends while attending the University of New England together in the mid-1960s.

“I immediately liked Jeremy, he was a fellow that everyone liked because he was so gregarious, he was outgoing, he was good at sport, he had a great smile and an engaging personality”, Mr Russell stated.

He went on to say that Mr Griffith “was perceived as idealistic – he was unaffected and young at heart”.

“I do not think people ever questioned his integrity – up until 1995 he had a reputation of having unquestionable integrity.”

“After the Four Corners program old university friends and others asked me if Jeremy was a madman, or if he was running a cult. He was totally misconstrued on that program”, Mr Russell added.

“I have noticed with Jeremy that he is not the same person that he used to be – he seems to me to have been scarred by the Four Corners program. I have seen that friends haven’t stood by him after the program I can tell he has been badly hurt by the program.”

A third statement for Mr Griffith was filed by another long time friend, one of Australia’s most successful furniture designers Bruce Dowse, maker of the Post & Rail and Pacific Green brands.

Mr Dowse recounted how they became friends 25 years ago through their mutual involvement in furniture making when Mr Griffith was based in the Tweed Valley in northern NSW, and later in Sydney where Mr Griffith had a furniture gallery.

“Prior to 1995, Jeremy was known as an honest reputable person who had a tremendous amount of integrity. He was known as someone who really wanted to do good stuff”, Mr Dowse stated.

“I think Jeremy’s ideas are a good thing – whether he is right or wrong; he is giving people the opportunity to understand themselves.

“In 1995 I watched the Four Corners programme. He came over badly in that – a lot of people believed it. I think that the situation is completely the opposite.”

Also filing witness statements were Fred Hollows Foundation director Gabi Hollows and climber Michael Groom.

In her statement, Ms Hollows described how she and her late husband Fred Hollows became good friends with Mr Macartney-Snape in the mid-1980s and how the broadcast had hurt and damaged the mountaineer.

“Prior to 1995, Tim was highly revered by many people – he is an extraordinary man. He was known as strong and steady. He was known as one of nature’s true gentlemen – very respectful of nature and things greater than you”, she stated.

“So many people were thrown by Four Corners. Tim was deeply hurt by it. I am aware that he had friends that would not defend him after the programme. A lot of people were wary of being associated with Tim after that programme. He had previously been on the top of many lists to be guest speaker … the Four Corners programme caused people to raincheck or cancel this invitation.”

In his statement, Everest mountaineer Michael Groom recounted how he first climbed with Mr Macartney-Snape in India in 1982 and again on Annapurna II the following year. Mr Groom went on to successfully summit Mt Everest in 1993 and again in 1996 as part of the ill-fated “Into Thin Air” expedition in which many climbers died.

Mr Groom’s statement detailed how demand for his services as a professional speaker has continued to grow since 1991 and that his diary records showed that he gave over 240 paid speeches from 2000 to 2006.

Earlier in the day cross-examination of the FHA’s Chief Executive Officer Sam Belfield continued as counsel for the defendants, Bret Walker SC, took him through a forensic examination of Mr Griffith’s work, some of the FHA’s newsletters and other material.

The trial resumes in the NSW Supreme Court on Tuesday, 10 April 2007.

In his third day in the witness box, the FHA’s Chief Executive Officer Sam Belfield described the shock and violation biologist Jeremy Griffith felt after the defamatory Four Corners program aired in 1995.

“Mr Griffith was shocked, distressed,” said Mr Belfield. “In particular by the extent and treatment of his ideas in the program…he felt violated by the program.”

As a result of Four Corners, which the ABC televised a second time the following week, Mr Griffith became “incredibly stressed”, he said.

Earlier, Mr Belfield gave evidence about a range of actions the plaintiffs initiated in the weeks prior to the defamatory broadcast including the retention of public relations company Jackson Wells Communications.

The Supreme Court was tendered a bundle of documents including letters sent to the ABC from both Jackson Wells and Mr Griffith alleging that the program’s guest producer Reverend David Millikan had misrepresented himself and raising serious concerns about the nature of the pending broadcast.

A letter of 6 April 1995 from Jackson Wells to the then executive producer of Four Corners, Ian Carroll, set out the plaintiffs’ position:

“Given that the Foundation believes Dr Millikan misrepresented the purpose of his assignment, and was not candid about his real views, we believe your decision to deny a debate is unjust.”

A letter the next day from Mr Griffith to Reverend Millikan took up a similar theme:

“… you said you were nominating the understandings in my books for a 16 part international documentary on new ideas for the next millennium - the series you said (24/1/95) is ‘an attempt to gather seminal thinkers who are not part of the mainstream but who should be put forward…I’m interested in what you are saying in terms of the progress for the future of Australia and the world.’ ”.

“… We cooperated with you on the basis of taking you at face value but you turned all that goodwill, spirit and trust around, misrepresenting to us yourself, your interest and the nature of the program”, wrote Mr Griffith.

Further correspondence preceded a Jackson Wells memorandum of 13 April 1995 directed to the then Managing Director of the ABC, Brian Johns, calling for his personal intervention:

“Dr Millikan is using the apparatus of the ABC to pursue some kind of personal obsession against the Foundation and Jeremy Griffith, its director, in particular.”

“This is being done through a range of methods including selective reporting, misrepresentation and the perpetuation of half truths…The circumstances of the program’s making are steeped in obsessive behaviour and deceit.”

After evidence-in-chief concluded, Mr Belfield was cross-examined by counsel for the defendants, Bret Walker SC, for the balance of the day.

The trial continues tomorrow.

In a day punctuated by legal argument, the Supreme Court heard further evidence from the FHA’s Chief Executive Officer Sam Belfield as Jeremy Griffith and Tim Macartney-Snape’s defamation trial against the ABC continued.

Mr Belfield described how his interest in Mr Griffith’s biological treatise developed through his attendance at a range of talks, walks and other gatherings organised by the FHA over the two years preceding the defamatory Four Corners broadcast in April 1995.

He recalled a particular gathering in Brisbane in January 1995 where Mr Griffith recounted a recent conversation with the second defendant, Reverend David Millikan.

“I wasn’t sure of the details, but understood that this person [Reverend Millikan] had got a prior assessment of Mr Griffith’s work incorrect, wrong,” Mr Belfield said.

The Court heard how an ABC-TV Four Corners film crew, including producers Reverend Millikan and Deborah Masters, joined an FHA bushwalk in the Snowy Mountains near Jindabyne over several days in early February 1995.

Mr Belfield agreed the film crew were free to move around the camp site, but said he was not aware that he was being recorded by Four Corners during an “emotional” conversation with his sister concerning their family which was subsequently included in the broadcast.

After some protracted legal argument about evidentiary issues, the Court was shown video footage of a talk on the human condition which Mr Griffith gave on the third day of the Snowy Mountains walk.

“The real battle, I’m suggesting, is a psychological one. Humans have been capable of immense love and sensitivity, but we have also been capable of greed, hatred, brutality, war, murder…that’s the riddle of the human condition”, Mr Griffith was seen saying.

The footage showed Mr Griffith elaborating on his synthesis and reflecting on the historical journey of new ideas.

“Before Darwin’s time, people thought the question the origin of the reason of the variety of life … seemed to them insoluble in those days but then Darwin came along, and Wallace, with the idea of natural selection…I suggest the great mystery of our time, that future children won’t have to grapple with, is the question of good and evil.”

Earlier in the day, the balance of a recording of an FHA Open Day in 1993 featuring discussion between Mr Griffith, Emeritus Professor Charles Birch and audience members was played to the Court.

Evidence from Mr Belfield continues tomorrow.

The owner of international adventure travel company World Expeditions told the NSW Supreme Court today of the damaging impact of the defamatory Four Corners program on one of his company’s leading representatives, Tim Macartney-Snape.

Nick Kostos, who regards Mr Macartney-Snape as among the finest trek leaders in the world, acknowledged that it was the climber’s association with Wilderness Expeditions that influenced his decision to buy the competing agency in 1992.

“Tim was a pre-eminent Australian mountaineer, in fact one of the pre-eminent mountaineers in the world, and if he was associated with our company it would be a tremendous competitive advantage,” he said.

The businessman went on to describe the negative effects the 1995 broadcast had on his colleague’s reputation and the complaints and cancellations that followed.

“My impression of the show was that Tim was a member of a cult and was brainwashing children,” Mr Kostos said. “We had clients ring up and complain that we were associated with Tim Macartney-Snape…asking why are we supporting someone who is in a cult.”

“After the program we had a cancellation rate that we have never experienced before…it was extremely difficult to attract people,” he said.

Mr Kostos said that “due to the controversy of the program, not only Four Corners but in the media generally” his company made a commercial decision to move the feature on Mr Macartney-Snape from page three to the back of its marketing brochure.

He went on to say how negative perceptions of Mr Macartney-Snape and the FHA were ongoing some 12 years after the broadcast, recounting that just two months ago he had been asked by an acquaintance whether Mr Macartney-Snape was “still involved with brainwashing children”.

During cross-examination, Mr Kostos said that after the broadcast he asked Mr Macartney-Snape if he was “a member of a cult” or “brainwashing children” and that the mountaineer had said “No”.

“I regard him as a person of high integrity and that was enough for me,” he said, adding, “I made a decision to support him no matter how many complaints we had.”

Taking the stand shortly before lunch, the FHA’s Chief Executive Officer Sam Belfield explained to the Court how he became interested in biologist Jeremy Griffith’s work after reading Beyond The Human Condition in 1993 while a rural science student at the University of New England.

He recounted how later that same year he attended an FHA Open Day in Sydney where Emeritus Professor Charles Birch, the Templeton Prize winning biologist, gave an address alongside Mr Griffith, one of the Professor’s former students from Sydney University.

An audio-visual recording of the Open Day showed Professor Birch giving his perspective on the “two huge themes” in Mr Griffith’s work, namely “the nature of the world” and “the nature of human nature”.

The Court saw footage of Professor Birch reflecting on the difficulties of the “mechanistic paradigm” of science and outlining how “science can’t deal with subjectivity…this is something that is very difficult to get your teeth into and yet it is the most important thing in the world”.

Evidence from Mr Belfield continues tomorrow in the Supreme Court.