CHANNEL 7 reporter Laura Banks has told a Sydney court she pursued Salim Mehajer because “you never know what you’ll get” but denied she deliberately provoked him on the day he allegedly slammed a car door on her.

Banks was attempting to interview Mr Mehajer, 31, as he left Day St police station on April 2 last year after being arrested over an alleged attack on a taxi driver.

As he was leaving — after a lengthy delay where he was pursued by Banks and several other journalists from a taxi, across a laneway and into a garage — Mr Mehajer shut a Porsche door on Banks, hitting her back and hand.

Mehajer admitted to using “immense force” when he slammed the door on Banks.

“Yes, I used immense force, I don’t deny that. But I was just worried about trying to get away,” Mr Mehajer told the Downing Centre Local Court on Monday.

“I felt like I was cornered.”

The impact caused her hand to almost immediately bruise and she still feels pain in her back.

The controversial property developer is fighting a charge of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

Mr Mehajer’s barrister Phillip Boulten SC played footage of the incident where Mr Mehajer could be heard telling Banks “you’re attached to me” and asking her to “get back”.

She said it was clear to her that “he didn’t feel threatened by me” because he was laughing and smiling.

In fact, she thought he was being “suggestive and flirtatious”.

Mr Boulten asked her if she thought Mr Mehajer was getting “agitated” and she replied it was the “situation” rather than herself that was causing that.

“In your own mind that morning did you ever think about whether you had reached the point where your actions crossed the boundary between proper and improper?” he asked her.

“No, I don’t believe they did,” she replied.

Mr Boulton read parts of the code of conduct of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, which instructs journalists to act with honesty, fairness and respect for others rights.

He asked Banks why she kept pursuing Mr Mehajer even though it was clear he wasn’t going to comment.

“You just never know what you’ll get with Mr Mehajer,” Banks told him.

“Do you normally carry on like this … what is a typical day for you,” Mr Boulten asked her.

Banks said her job as a Channel 7 crime reporter often meant she had to interview people in similar situations.

He then asked her why she asked Mr Mehajer about the size of his heels. “It was to belittle him?”

Banks said it was to obtain a “response”.

“To goad him into a response or to provoke him,” Mr Boulten put to her.

“No,” she answered before adding: “I was doing my job”.

A friend of Mr Mehajer’s arrived in a white Porsche and Mehajer got into the drivers seat and told her to “watch out”.

Banks said it was clear the pair had not finished talking.

“The conversation continuing indicates he didn’t want to drive away,” she told the court.

Mr Mehajer told the court he felt “cornered, bullied and harassed” by the media when they confronted him in the laneway.

“I didn’t want to face the media,” he said this afternoon.

“It was horrendous.”

He told Mr Boulten he didn’t intend to hit Banks with the door.

“Absolutely not ... It all happened very quickly. My thought was [only] to leave.”

Footage of the incident was played to the court in which Mr Mehajer can be heard inviting Banks into the back seat of the car moments before the alleged assault.

“You want to jump in the back seat? Jump in, I’ll have a little chat to you,” he said. “Let’s go, just jump in.”

She replied: “You want to have a chat to me, what are we talking about?”

Mr Boulton said the invitation for Ms Banks to get in the car was sarcastic.

“She was in his face both figuratively and literally,” he said. “What was happening was not journalism, it was not appropriate and it was in fact unlawful.”

Banks told Prosecutor Senior Sergeant Amin Assaad Mr Mehajer answered “some” of her questions.

Mr Mehajer watched intently as Banks gave her evidence and wrote on a piece of paper in front of him.

When the car arrived to pick him she said she followed him to the car “door way as we were still conversing”.

“Mr Mehajer asked me of I would like to get in the back of car. I said to him ‘What do you want to talk about?’ and to which responded ‘just get in the back and have a chat’ ... or words to that effect was his response.”

Banks said he then “roughly” shut the door on her.

“I was jammed in the door.”

She said the pain and bruising on her hand, that had been “squashed”, appeared almost immediately and also suffered a back injury which was “still quite sore”.

In his submissions Mr Assaad said Mr Mehajer slammed the door against Banks in a deliberate action. “[He knew] full well that she was there.”

Magistrate Joanne Keogh will deliver her judgment on Friday morning.

Mr Mehajer is in custody on charges of perverting the course of justice and conspiracy to cheat and defraud relating to a car crash in October last year where he and others allegedly staged a collision in Lidcombe. He was denied bail last week and will reappear on those matters next month.

andrew.koubaridis@news.com.au