First Qantas, now Coles: the star corporate lawyer beating her one-time clients

May 16, 2026 — 3:45am

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Many Australians, Kevin Rudd pronounced in 2021, were worried the Morrison government had appointed Gina Cass-Gottlieb to run the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Rudd charged the competition solicitor with being “a long-serving Murdoch family associate”. She was a “former personal lawyer to Lachlan Murdoch”, Rudd noted, and she had been a director of Murdoch family’s corporate trustee, Cruden Financial Services.

“Her close association with the Murdochs will cause many Australians legitimate concern, given the Murdoch family’s concentration of Australian media power is unmatched in the democratic world,” said Rudd, then at the peak of his post-prime ministerial anti-Murdoch activism.

The implication was that she was some kind of patsy for the corporate world. It has not aged well.

As a partner at major law firm Gilbert Tobin, who was repeatedly ranked the best competition lawyer in the country, Cass-Gottlieb had no shortage of corporate clients alongside the younger Murdoch. Over the years, she acted for Tabcorp, Wesfarmers, Westpac, Woolworths, Telstra and the Australian Banking Association among many others.

Those former clients are now the kinds of firms she has held to account, winning landmark case after landmark case.

In 2024, Qantas agreed to settle the ACCC’s case alleging it sold tickets on thousands of “ghost flights” it had already cancelled for $120 million in penalties and compensation. On Thursday, Federal Court Justice Michael........

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