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Amy Taeuber fights back against Adelaide knuckle-draggers

By Malcolm King - posted Monday, 9 October 2017


Channel Seven trawled through Amy's social media account and found footage of her taking part with one of her sisters, in a satirical send up of My Kitchen Rules, a Channel Seven Production.

In July 2016 she was dismissed for "serious misconduct", but sued the network asserting her sacking was because of her original harassment complaint against Mr Lohse and not a send up of a cooking show.

The alleged wrongful dismissal suit was settled out of court in a confidential agreement in February this year. Mr Lohse faced no consequences over the harassment allegations although he made a public apology.

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He is currently working for Channel Seven's Today Tonight in Brisbane.

Amy Taeuber lost her job.

In a recent statement, Channel Seven said, "There was an investigation into alleged breaches of Amy Taeuber's employment contract. Seven's HR team did not try to build any case against her and their investigation was not related to any complaint made by Amy about other staff."

The problem was Channel Seven only started looking for 'evidence' to be used against her after she has raised the Lohse comment matter. Why would they do that? She had ruffled feathers. Noses had got out of joint. Sound like she would have made an excellent reporter.

Amy's story was catapulted back into the headlines most recently when ABC's 7.30 broadcast audio recordingsof a telephone-on-speaker meeting she had with Channel Seven's HR manager.

Amy was told at the meeting that she was not allowed to have a senior staff member in the room as a witness (another mistake) and to hand over her phone and ID card.

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She was not permitted to log out of her computer or off her private accounts, including Facebook, before it was seized by the company. All because of a satirical skit? I think not.

It sounds like bulldust doesn't it? So not only had a large news gathering organisation – which has had its own problems at the most senior executive levels – side against the young reporter, they concocted a post facto explanation to try knit some extraordinary loose ends together.

Gloria Steinem said that, "Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood."

Amy Taeuber has her two sisters for support but she has more than that. She stood up to a corporation of hackneyed 'yes sayers' and bullies and told them to stick it. She has guts and guts is enough.

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About the Author

Malcolm King is a journalist and professional writer. He was an associate director at DEEWR Labour Market Strategy in Canberra and the senior communications strategist at Carnegie Mellon University in Adelaide. He runs a writing business called Republic.

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