The Daily Mail has not taken Erin Molan’s defamation lawsuit lying down, revealing they have been raking through several years of rugby league podcasts in an attempt to prove that the Channel nine presenter is objectively racist.
DM has reportedly collected a number of quotes from 2GB’s Continuous Call Team archive and have on record saying “You like raw feesh?”, “Pick up your chopsticks” and “I wuv you wery long time”.
The 61-page defence alleges the Continuous Call Team frequently spewed out “racist content” on the show by mocking Pacific Islander and Maori names along with emulating Chinese, Indian and other accents.
Molan’s lawyer told NCA NewsWire in a statement: “Ms Molan has commenced proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia for defamatory allegations made about her by the Daily Mail.
“Those allegations, now repeated by the Daily Mail in its defence, are denied. It would be inappropriate to comment further as the matter is before the court.”
Molan claimed that the Daily Mail painted her as a racist and an “arrogant white woman of privilege” in a story about her saying “hooka looka mooka hooka fooka” on air back in June.
She has repeatedly defended herself by saying she was not mocking Polynesian names and was actually referencing to a past Continuous Call Team story about Chris and Ray Warren.
The Daily Mail’s defence was filed on Monday and contains transcripts of 24 conversations on Continuous Call Team dating back to March 2017.
It involves Molan and past and present co-hosts Ray Hadley, Bob Fulton, Darryl Brohman and others.
One excerpt dating back to April 1, 2017, hears Hadley saying, “And now, why don’t we have a conversation with Darryl doing his Chinese and Erin doing her Chinese?”
“Herro, I wery goo lookin,” Molan said, according to the defence.
“Just do one for me, ‘I love you long time’, just do that for me,” Hadley said.
“I wuv you wery long tiyme, wery handsome man, ohhh, you like to walk with me in a cercle,” Ms Molan said.
In another clip given by the defence on March 17, 2018, Hadley tells a story about women in Japan giving birth.
“You like raw feesh,” Molan said. “Sorry, was that racist?”
“Yeah … it wasn’t good,” Fulton said.
“Was it really? No it wasn’t, ’cause they do,” Molan said.
According to the defence, Molan sometimes participated in the conversations.
The defence also said that at times she laughed along, stayed silent, or asked “in a humorous fashion” whether what had been said was racist.
In another excerpt from August 24, 2019, Brohman states he is going to release a Chinese cookbook.
“Gonna put a big nappy on so I look like a sumo and say, ‘Come and get it! Big Marn’s Chinese Cookbook!’,” he allegedly said.
“Herro! That’s gonna be the name of the book,” Brohman said later.
“I just don’t know if this is OK now in this day and age,” Molan said.
“Oh, who cares,” Fulton responded.
Later in the conversation, the defence claims Molan said “Now we’re all talking like ohhh … you no … bad boy … you naughty … dwop your pen … pick up your chopstick” in an accent.
“Can I just throw something in here? Do we like working here? I don’t think we’re gonna have a big chance of being here next year,” Fulton said.
“I know we like to toe the line but this might be like a whole heel over the line,” Molan said.
“No, no, we’re right,” Mark Levy said.
The defence also included another transcript from March 18, 2017, in which Brohman put on several accents, including Irish, American, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian.
Molan said: “Someone will write in now and say we’re being racist. I think it’s hilarious.”
The defence also includes transcripts of Brohman who recounted the story about Chris and Ray Warren.
It is the story that Molan said she was referencing with her original comment.
“It was last year at a Manly game and they had a reserve that I hadn’t seen before, but he had a name with about 30 letters in it, and I had trouble pronouncing it, and I said to Chris, ‘Mate, how do you pronounce this bloke’s name?’” Brohman said on April 5, 2020.
“He said, ‘Well, Dad thought his name was Chooka-lucka-loo-loo, but I said no, no, no, Dad, I think it’s Chooka-lucka-loo-loo-loo-loo.’”
Audio of the conversations remain publicly available online.
In the defence, the Daily Mail claims these conversations prove Molan is racist.
Molan also accused the Daily Mail of falsely stating she refused to apologise when she says she had in fact apologised on air.
In the defence, the media outlet said it was not “a true apology” and she had “simply stated that if people ‘in the current climate’ had been offended or hurt by her that she was sorry”.
This article originally appeared on Over60.