The Australian Rugby League Commission chairman and long-time Racing NSW chief executive is suing the public broadcaster and Walkley Award-winning journalist Caro Meldrum-Hanna over October 2019 report The Final Race.

The report, aired on 730, exposed cruelty against former racehorses across Australia and aired graphic footage from Meramist Abattoir in Queensland.

Mr V'Landys is expected to give evidence in the Federal Court on Wednesday that the report hurt his feelings, undermined his reputation as a regulator and brought his reputation into public disrepute, ridicule and contempt.

The ABC denies The Final Race conveyed the claimed defamatory meanings, and maintains a copy of the episode and transcript on its website.

Opening his case on Wednesday, Bruce McClintock SC said his client was interviewed two days before the report aired but the ABC "at a senior level" had decided to keep him in the dark about the Meramist footage.

"They had an agenda to make the racing industry and my client to look bad," Mr McClintock told Justice Michael Wigney.

The barrister alleged the report intentionally "did its very best ... to trash and destroy" Mr V'landys' reputation.

"And they succeeded," he said.

Mr McClintock read out a selection of the "firestorm of abuse that beset" the racing chief after the program aired on October 17.

"These people are saying - at least two of them are saying - that they want Mr V'landys sent to these abattoirs himself," he said.

It was open to the public broadcaster to air the footage and say the appalling practice should be stopped, Mr McClintock said. But the ABC had gone to the length of pointing the finger at Racing NSW and implying Mr V'landys was "particularly responsible".

"His powers stop at the Tweed and the Murray and he can do nothing about what happens in Queensland," Mr McClintock said.

The trial continues.

Australian Associated Press