Sayers v Sayers comes to Trash Towers
This may be the closest thing to a live performance of MAFS we've ever seen.
The blockbuster Cate Sayers v Luke Sayers defamation proceedings swung through the Supreme Court of Victoria on Friday for a directions hearing. Cate has filed her statement of claim, Luke has filed his first defence, and the trial – likely before a jury – has been set down for November 23. I've blocked out my diary, booked a suite at the Ritz-Carlton and taken a standing dinner reservation at Gimlet. Dominick Dunne moved into the Chateau Marmont when he covered the OJ Simpson trial for Vanity Fair, and that legal circus frankly had nothing on this one.
Luke's 16-page defence is quite the construction. He's now found his voice on one small matter, at least: Yes, folks, that was my penis. Just clearing that up. Oh, but the photo of my penis was "taken for medical purposes". Who knew Luke was so artistic? Rather than zoom in to isolate the purported affliction upon his tackle, he sprawled out fully nude like an ethereal Norman Lindsay subject. Does Luke's GP also sit on the judging panel for the Archibald Prize?
Arguably what makes this scandal – and now dispute – so compelling, is that it's quite impossible to know who or what to believe. Did Luke unintentionally publish the photo to X while trying to send it to someone privately? Did a malevolent actor – whether Cate or someone else – get hold of his phone? Or did someone hack him remotely?
In any contest of believability, Luke's handicap is his track record. As we learned in the PwC tax leaks scandal of 2023 and 2024, his statements need to be treated with extreme scepticism, for he has no shame asserting the most implausible things with the fervour of a martyr. Luke is an adherent of George Costanza's famous rule for life: it's not a lie if you believe it. Yet it also doesn't automatically follow that someone untrustworthy should never be believed.
What we do know is that Luke provided the AFL with a statutory declaration in January 2025 explaining "Luke's version of events in relation to the publication of the X post". That statutory declaration has not yet been made available by the court but we can infer from Cate's statement of claim that in the statutory declaration, Luke claimed she suffered from both bipolar disorder and multiple personality disorder and was known to stop taking her medication.
