FREMANTLE mayor Hannah Fitzhardinge has denied misleading the Herald and its readers about legal advice to remove an Instagram post at the centre of a defamation action launched by The Fremantle Society and its president John Dowson (“No backdown in racism row,” Herald, June 14, 2025).

Ms Fitzhardinge had told a Chook reporter she’d not been asked by the City or its lawyers McLeod’s to remove the post, and while she now acknowledges that advice did come, she says it wasn’t until after the interview.

Mr Dowson had accused the mayor of an “untruth” after reading the story in the Herald, having received a letter from McLeod’s telling the society about its advice to Ms Fitzhardinge on June 3.

The original video, posted after a Reconciliation Week launch in Fremantle where the mayor says she was inspired by premier Roger Cook to “call out racism”, has since been removed.

Ms Fitzhardinge said she’d been advised not to speak further on the case, but lamented that the issue was being played out in public.

Earlier this week Mr Dowson provided an update to members announcing that lawyer Sue Chrysanthou, who’d won $2.9 in damages for actor Geoffrey Rush in his defamation action against Nationwide News, had agreed to take on the Society’s case in conjunction with their current legal team Di Lena.