When journalist, presenter and diversity advocate Antoinette Lattouf signed off from her ABC local radio shift last month, she told her audience chirpily, “I’ll be back tomorrow. Can’t wait. I’ll talk to you then.”

She had every reason to think this would be true. Her whisper-light, pre-Christmas morning programs on ABC Radio Sydney had seemingly been going well and she had two shifts to go under her short-term, casual contract.

Antoinette Lattouf: sacked from the ABC allegedly for expressing a political opinion about the Israel Gaza conflict.Credit: Louie Douvis

The following morning, though, listeners switched on to hear the voice of weekend presenter Simon Marnie. In the intervening day, according to an unlawful termination claim Lattouf later filed, she had first been told at a lunchtime meeting that the audience was “responding very well,” then, an hour later, she was sacked. The reason given, she claimed, was that she had breached the ABC’s social media policy with an Instagram post, and that the order had come from much higher up.

The post in question was a link to a Human Rights Watch report that said the Israeli government was “using starvation of civilians as a weapon of war in Gaza”. In the ordinary course of events reposting a report from a credible organisation would attract little attention. Her sacking, and her subsequent claim before the Fair Work Commission for unlawful termination, will.

Her initial complaint in December claimed her sacking was unlawful because the law protects employees for expressing a political opinion. This week, she added that it was based in part on her race and cultural background: she is “Lebanese and/or Arab and/or Middle Eastern”.

An ABC spokesman said the ABC would submit its response to Lattouf’s claims on Monday and, “We welcome the opportunity to address her allegations”.

Lattouf’s story pokes at three hugely sensitive sores spots in the Australian media, and the ABC particularly.

Stan Grant resigned from the ABC after claiming it had failed to properly support him.

The first, raised by Indigenous journalist Stan Grant as he quit the ABC last August, is how the national broadcaster treats its racially and culturally diverse staff. The second is the alleged shortcomings in how the Australian media is covering the war in Gaza, and the third is whether journalists have a right to hold, and express political opinions, particularly about that conflict.