Consumer Affairs Victoria pushes for $1.1m fine but justice says she has seen no evidence of Gibson’s capacity to pay

A Melbourne court is struggling to determine an appropriate penalty for the disgraced wellness blogger Belle Gibson, after she sold thousands of copies of her cookbook and wellness app off the back of false claims she cured numerous cancers through following a healthy lifestyle.

Gibson has failed to show up to court since proceedings brought against her by Consumer Affairs Victoria began last year and has also not responded to evidence before the court or submitted her own.

In March, the federal court found Gibson had breached parts of the Australian consumer law that states a person must not engage in trade or commerce likely to mislead or deceive.

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Consumer Affairs Victoria’s legal counsel told federal court justice Debra Mortimer on Thursday morning that Gibson could face a maximum penalty of $1.1m for contravening five consumer laws.

But Mortimer said there was no point in issuing a significant fine against a person or company if they had no means of paying that penalty. It would not act as a deterrent, Mortimer said, if others saw Gibson simply not pay a penalty because she did not have the means to. Many companies went into liquidation, she added, making large monetary penalties problematic.

Because of Gibson’s “no show”, Mortimer said she had no evidence of Gibson’s capacity to pay.

“There’s no evidence before the court from which which it can draw any inference,” Mortimer said. “I don’t know whether she’s employed, I don’t know whether she’s independently wealthy, I don’t know whether she’s got any generous friends.

“I’m not aware of any case where this level of non-participation has occurred.”

Mortimer also deliberated over whether ordering Gibson to make a public apology in the form of a newspaper advertisement would be appropriate, given she had no evidence of whether Gibson was actually remorseful.

“I’ve been asked to make orders that Gibson recognise things and apologise for things in her absence, and I have no evidentiary basis to find she is apologetic,” Mortimer said. “I may be ordering her to make statements completely contrary to what she believes.”

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Mortimer also said it was unclear whether Gibson was not attending court because she was embarrassed, because she was “thumbing her nose at the whole process” or for reasons somewhere “in between”.

Gibson’s product, The Whole Pantry, included a website, mobile phone app and recipe book of the same name. Her story of shunning conventional medicine and curing herself with food began to fall apart in 2015 when it was revealed she never made thousands of dollars in charity donations she promised off the back of money raised through her success.



She then said she had been diagnosed by a German magnetic therapist with cancers she claimed to have in her blood, spleen, uterus and liver and brain but, in an interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly, admitted she never had cancer at all, saying: “None of it’s true.”

Mortimer adjourned her decision on penalties to a later date yet to be determined and asked Consumer Affair Victoria to return with more information that might assist her in making her decision.