Antony Catalano: Concerns raised about Australian Community Media owner’s behaviour a decade ago

Antony Catalano was one of the most commercially successful newspaper journalists of his generation.

After a violent altercation with a woman, he has lost his job, his reputation is in tatters and his freedom is at risk.

The businessman was stood down on the weekend as executive chairman of Australian Community Media, the nation’s largest independent newspaper publisher, after being charged with assault. Police alleged he dragged a woman by her hair and ankles through an apartment he shares with his wife Stefanie into a laundry and tried to strike her in the head with an iron.

Mr Catalano, who hasn’t entered a plea, has been a powerful force in real estate marketing for much of his career. But questions were raised about his personal and professional behaviour at least a decade ago — behaviour that has seemed to become more aggressive over time.

The woman involved in Thursday’s incident was his wife, Stefanie, a source told The Nightly, and the police were called by a neighbour. She spent several hours in hospital afterwards with a fractured coccyx, the police alleged, according to an account of a Magistrate’s Court hearing by ABC journalist Kristian Silva.

Mr Catalano was held overnight before being released by a magistrate, despite objections from the police.

Mr Catalano did not respond to The Nightly, but said in a written statement said he was “deeply ashamed and humiliated” and would enter a “rehabilitation program immediately”.

Boys club

As the co-owner of 169 newspapers and news websites, from the Canberra Times to Good Fruit and Vegetables, Mr Catalano is a big player in regional media. The extroverted salesman could have been bigger.

In January, 2018, he abruptly resigned as chief executive of Domain, the property-marketing website he had built into a $2 billion business.

Although the departure was framed as necessary to spend more time with his family, it was later revealed that chairman Nick Falloon had confronted Mr Catalano with allegations about his conduct and management style.

Part way through the conversation, Mr Catalano quit.

Although the exact details of the conversation are not known, staff who worked at Domain at the time described a boys-club culture in which some women were addressed as “doll” and “babe” and recreational drugs were consumed at office parties.

Male managerial staff met at a strip club near the company’s offices in South Melbourne, according to employees, who said Domain’s first Christmas party after being spun off from owner Fairfax Media was called “The White Party”.

When information about the company’s culture leaked into the press, Mr Catalano mistakenly blamed Mr Falloon and threatened to sue for defamation. He never did.

After leaving Domain, Mr Catalano formed a business alliance with Alex Waislitz, who had become a billionaire by marrying into the Pratt family, which owns cardboard recycler Visy Industries.

In 2019, the two men bought Australian Community Media from Fairfax, and made investments in other media companies, including what is now a 7.5 per cent stake in Southern Cross Media Group, which owns The Nightly.

Mr Catalano bought one of Byron Bay’s top hotels, Raes on Wategos, and a $30 million apartment overlooking Port Phillip Bay in Melbourne in the same building as his business partner. He is trying to get permission to build a $50m family compound in Byron Bay. He has nine children.

Byron Bay confrontations

On Monday Mr Waislitz said the allegations against his business partner were “incredibly confronting and concerning”. “Violence against women is unacceptable and should not be tolerated,” he said in a written statement.

“My thoughts are with all those affected by this matter.”

On Monday, The Australian and the Australian Financial Review reported on the existence of a recording from 2018 of Stefanie Catalano describing a violent encounter with her husband to a friend.

Mr Catalano headbutted her, she said, according to the papers, after she asked to track his phone’s location. She called the police because she was “petrified”, she said.

“Antony’s like, ‘You physically abused me first,’” she reportedly said. “And I’m like, ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t’. He’s like, ‘If you don’t say this, they’re going to put an AVO against you’. So then I sat here the whole time with the police, and I’m like, ‘I’ve made the whole thing up … just please go away’.”

For a man who owns newspapers, Mr Catalano has suffered a lot of poor publicity.

Last June he made the news after a confrontation with a driver who may have illegally parked at his hotel.

“It is completely unacceptable to approach and verbally abuse someone — especially a pregnant woman — for parking in an area where no signage indicates that parking is prohibited,” a person wrote on Facebook, according to the Financial Review’s Rear Window column.

He said it was a “massive misunderstanding” and he wanted to help her avoid a parking fine.

A few months earlier, Mr Catalano became embroiled in a physical altercation with a local jeweller, Giovanni D’Ercole, outside the hotel at 7.45am. Mr D’Ercole’s home abuts the Catalano family block.

The police interviewed both men and charged neither.

Jail term

In his written statement, Mr Catalano said he had ignored advice to seek professional help for his mental health.

“In light of recent events, I have now accepted that I need help and I will be checking myself into a rehabilitation program immediately,” he said. “I will also be taking a six-month leave of absence from all professional responsibilities so I can focus entirely on treatment and recovery.”

Closed-circuit television footage of the alleged assault “doesn’t look great” and there was “no doubt” Mr Catalano made physical contact with the woman, his barrister, Jason Gullaci SC, told the court, according to the ABC. Mr Gullaci did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Magistrate Rohan Lawrence said the evidence was “relatively strong” and a jail term was possible, the broadcaster reported.

Mr Catalano said he would give up work for at least six months, although as the co-owner of ACM and a related real estate classified business called View Media, he could return and live up to his nickname: The Cat.