ACA report branded “powerful attack”

A report aired on A Current Affair in August 2008 is at the centre of a defamation case in the NSW Supreme Court today.

Sydney plastic surgeon and burns specialist Peter Anthony Haertsch is suing the Nine Network over a story on a Gold Coast ‘meter maid’ whose breast implants went horribly wrong.

In the report the woman described her stitches bursting before the implants began falling out. It said Mr Haertsch had been banned from operating in Queensland and branded him a ‘disgraced plastic surgeon.’

In part of an interview for the report, Mr Haertsch said: “In retrospect, I believe the implants were too big for that girl”.

His barrister, Stuart Littlemore, QC, told the court the report was, “a powerful attack, but a totally untrue one … a script replete with falsehoods”. He said the allegation he had been banned from operating in Queensland was also untrue.

The program had used heavy editing, “manipulated images and sinister sound effects” to create the defamatory program, he said.

Littlemore, who successfully defended Mercedes Corby against the Seven network, said in Haertsch’s 40 years he had treated victims of the Bali bombings, headed up the burns unit at the Concord Hospital in Sydney and taught surgery at Sydney University.

Littlemore is also a former Media Watch host.

In 2006, current Media Watch host Jonathan Holmes interviewed Haertsch for a Four Corners story on the booming business of cosmetic surgery and those who performed it. His comments, which predate the ACA story, seemed to concur on Haertsch’s reputation as ‘an eminent Sydney plastic surgeon.’

Holmes said: “Professor Peter Haertsch, like all qualified plastic surgeons, is a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, known in the profession as RACS. Earning the right to put FRACS after your name involves at least eight years’ arduous post-graduate training. Many plastic surgeons do a further two years overseas.

“RACS runs the only surgical training course in Australia recognised by the Australian Medical Council. In some states – including Queensland – only fellows of RACS are entitled to call themselves surgeons. But in most states – including Victoria and New South Wales – it’s different.”

The hearing continues.

Source: news.com.au, ABC