Ex-cop may force Underbelly off air | Noosa TV Guide | Noosa Television, Australia

Channel Nine

A FORMER Sydney police officer is demanding access to the latest series of the hit TV show Underbelly before it goes to air to see if she has been defamed, a Sydney court has heard.

Wendy Gaye Hatfield is mentioned in a "tie-in" book for the Network Nine show, entitled Underbelly: The Golden Mile, which she says paints her in a bad light.

She has taken the network to the NSW Supreme Court demanding access to the episodes in which her character appears to see if she has been legally defamed.

Her lawyer, Sue Chrysanthou, says that if Ms Hatfield's character appears in the same way as in the book, it will be defamatory because it will infer she is corrupt and had a sexual relationship with Sydney nightclub entrepreneur John Ibrahim while working as a police officer in Kings Cross.

If that is the case, Ms Hatfield will seek an injunction to stop the show going to air, Ms Chrysanthou told Justice Ian Harrison on Wednesday.

Alec Leopold, acting for Underbelly's producers Screen Time, says that although it is a tie-in, the book has not been produced in conjunction with the television series.

"The content was not based on, a replication of or derived from the series," he told the court on Wednesday.

As such, it could not be assumed that Ms Hatfield's screen character was treated in a similar way.

Furthermore, requesting to see the series before its release date - as yet unannounced - is "a very serious invasion of privacy", he said.

Bruce McClintock SC, for Network Nine, said all the information used as the base for the series and the book was available on the public record and was widely known at the time of the events depicted in the mid-1990s.

"One has to say that this stuff has a degree of notoriety in the 1990s," he said.

"The Wood Royal Commission reports are all available on the website ... people have access to the same materials, so they came up with some similarities."

Ms Hatfield had resigned from the police force and had denied to the commission that she had a sexual relationship with Mr Ibrahim.

Justice Harrison has reserved his judgment, to be delivered on March 12.