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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

The defamation trial between Bruce Lehrmann and Channel Ten is nearing its end.

More than two weeks of the hearing has revealed emotional evidence from witnesses, exposed lies, and shed new light on the culture inside Parliament House.

Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper, Rick Morton, on the attitudes, behaviour and personal feuds in the lead up to the events in Canberra in March of 2019.

It’s Wednesday, December 13.

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ANGE:

Rick, you've been covering the defamation trial of Bruce Lehrmann, which is now on its 14th day of evidence. We already spoke in a previous episode about, kind of, the different accounts of what happened on the night that Brittany Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann ended up back at Parliament House. But the trial has now heard evidence about what happened in the weeks leading up to that night. What have we learned?

RICK:

Yeah, I think this is really important because in many respects, this story starts just a few weeks prior to that night of the 22nd and 23rd of March in 2019. And that's when, of course, Linda Reynolds gets sworn in, she has a promotion. And on Saturday, the 2nd of March, she becomes the new minister for defence industry.

Audio excerpt – Scott Morrison:

“I’m pleased to announce that Senator Linda Reynolds will be sworn in as a Cabinet Minister today here in Canberra, the Governor-General, in a few moments time…”

RICK:

They have a lunch at an Italian restaurant, and of course, they're drinking. A few of them decide to head on this Saturday to the Kingo, which is at the Kingston Hotel in Canberra, it's an inner city institution really. You've got the media advisor for Linda Reynolds, Nicky Hamer, and two policy advisers, Jesse Wotton and Bruce Lehrmann. And they're talking about the fact that Steve Ciobo, who was their predecessor, is retiring and some of his staff are going to have to find new jobs, and Linda Reynolds is going to need some of that stuff for continuity purposes. So they're talking about who could fill those roles, right. And we heard in court last Wednesday, Nicky Hamer gave evidence that Bruce Lehrmann made a comment that Brittany — being Brittany Higgins — was good looking, and he asked Nicky Hamer if she knew her, and Miss Hamer told the court that she didn't, but they were acquaintances and they had each other on Instagram. And so Nicky Hamer messaged Brittany Higgins and said, “Are you free to come down to the pub?” and Brittany said, “Yeah, I've got something on tonight. I've got to go to the night noodle markets with my friend, with my flatmate, but I can come down for literally one drink.”

And interestingly, about this night, we first get a glimpse into some of the tensions in that office. So when, true to her word, when Brittany Higgins says that she needs to leave after just a quick stop in, Hamer gave evidence that Bruce Lehrmann took her phone away from her as a bit of play, but also to prevent her from booking herself an Uber. It was all a little bit of fun and a bit joking around, but then Nicky Hamer was like “guys like she said she could only come for one drink, just let her go.” And when the phone was returned to Brittany Higgins, according to Nicky Hamer, Lehrmann blew up at her. And that interaction, I think it's fair to say, really angered Nicky Hamer.

And when she left sometime around, you know, 9:30 p.m. or 9 p.m., Nicky Hamer had kind of… she'd had it, and she calls her dad, according to her own evidence, and then fires off an email to Linda Reynolds saying that she quits. So the very next day, which was the Sunday — bearing in mind Linda Reynolds had just been sworn in — all three of them are hauled before Minister Reynolds at Parliament House to explain what had happened. And Linda Reynolds essentially believed the version of events put by Nicky Hamer, and now how is she meant to give this job to Brittany Higgings when there’s been this blow up at the pub, and conflicting accounts of how that came to be and the perceptions and all of the rest of it.

And so they got in a huge amount of trouble. And it was very… it was an unpromising start to the new portfolio. But of course, as we now know, Brittany Higgins did get that job, and it was only a few weeks later that things really started to unravel in that office.

ANGE:

And all of this evidence we're talking about is very revealing about the kind of attitudes and the culture among staff in that office in the lead up to that night. But in the context of this defamation trial over a Channel Ten story that happens, you know, a couple of years later, what's the significance of this evidence?

RICK:

Yeah. Well, I think we should obviously, for those of you who haven't been playing along at home, this is a defamation trial. Bruce Lehrmann is suing both Network 10 and the journalist Lisa Wilkinson, who was co-host of the Project for Defamation, after airing an interview with Brittany Higgins, and the allegations that he raped her in Parliament House during a broadcast of the show, The Project, on February 15th, 2021. So this is almost exactly two years after the night in which Brittany Higgins alleges that Bruce Lehrmann raped her, which is a claim that he is always extremely strongly denied. He says he never had any sexual contact with her whatsoever, and that is why he's suing Channel Ten and The Project. Now, why is this prior evidence important? Because the judge is going to have to eventually make a decision on the balance of probabilities about who to believe. And what we know from the evidence is that the office of Linda Reynolds was a hive of security breaches, of staffing feuds and tension, problem drinking. And the incidents kept piling up, and there were a number of them. But, that matters because the office culture is part of the, I guess, the environment now in which the judge will make a decision about, well, were the people who were at the centre of this trial, were they vaguely honest, have they lied about other things in the past, do their versions of events about what happened on the 23rd, on the morning of the 23rd of March 2019 makes sense given what we know about their prior conduct?

And we also heard from the then aide-de-camp to Linda Reynolds, Nikita Irvine, and she told the court that she kind of had “bad vibes” on Bruce, those were her words in the early days of the office, and just didn't really want to spend time with him. And she was asked by Dr. Collins KC, for Channel Ten, why that was, and she just said, “look, call it women's intuition. I had a feeling.” And so we're getting lots of little pieces of the puzzle about who these main characters are, because they are now characters in a trial upon whom Justice Michael Lee will cast judgement.

ANGE:

After the break, what the mother and father of Brittany Higgins told the court this week.

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ANGE:

So, Rick, the defamation trial of Bruce Lehrmann versus Channel Ten is in its fourth week, and as we've been talking about, the trial is still going over the events surrounding the night of March 22, 2019. What evidence have we heard about that night?

RICK:

Yeah, it's almost like we just keep going back and back and back and back. I think the judge, Justice Michael Lee at one point said, “we've seen the footage of the bar, the dock, where Bruce Lehrmann is buying rounds of drinks and Brittany’s hanging out with her Bumble date, and then abandoning her Bumble date” and the judge said, “We've seen the footage of that more times than the Zapruder film”, which is the JFK assassination film, at this point. And it's probably not wrong. It feels like we're just returning to that same well. But what we are getting at as this trial goes on is more evidence from other people who were there that night.

Let’s just take Lauren Gain, as an example, she's a former staffer of Steven Ciobo. She was out with the group, it was Brittany Higgins, Bruce Lehrmann and Austin Wenke, who was an adviser for Peter Dutton when he was Home Affairs minister. The four of them went to a club in Canberra, which is more of a nightclub called 88mph. And Lauren Gain gave evidence that while they were there, she saw Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins being very touchy. But also then she saw them kiss. And this is a very interesting detail because Bruce Lehrmann has always denied any sexual contact with Brittany Higgins and Brittany Higgins, I don't think, has ever given evidence about remembering what happened at 88mph, but has given evidence about a previous attempt by Bruce Lehrmann to try and kiss her. And the next day, we've got this in written evidence as well. The next day, Lauren Gain, who witnessed all of this, sent a message to the aide-de-camp, Nikita had been asked how the night was, and then Lauren Gain said Brittany hooked up with Bruce. Under cross-examination, the footage again was played to Bruce Lehrmann, and Ten's barrister, Matt Collins, made the suggestion that Lehrmann had pushed a bunch of drinks towards Brittany Higgins on that night, saying that they were, quote unquote, “all hers”. Now, Collins also suggested that Lehrmann was trying to get drunk, and Lehrmann just emphatically denies those suggestions.

ANGE:

We have heard a lot about what happened before the night at Parliament House. We've heard so much about what happened on the night, but we've also heard a bit more about what happened afterwards and how Brittany Higgins and Bruce Lehrmann were feeling in the days and months afterwards. What exactly has come up about that?

RICK:

That's right. And this week we've heard from Brittany Higgins’ parents, her mother, Kelly Higgins, and her father, Matthew Higgins, about the kind of person their daughter became after the alleged rape, and before they knew about it, Brittany Higgins, his mother, Kelly Higgins, you know, gave evidence that her daughter had become, kind of removed and despondent and difficult to communicate with. And it wasn't until the 21st of November, according to Kelly Higgins, 21st November 2019, that she even learned about what had happened. And it was at a dinner at a restaurant at a hotel in Brisbane where, according to her, Brittany Higgins finally got this off her chest, which was what had really happened on the night. And Kelly Higgins, told the court, “you know, I just I just been told a mother's worst nightmare and I wanted to know more”, she asked, you know, why nobody helped her, why no one, and called an ambulance and was, of course, immediately put under the blowtorch of Steven Whybow KC, who was asking what seems like, in his version of events, the order of things is completely out of whack. And that's what he was trying to put her. And, of course, Brittany's father, then gave evidence as well, also about how he couldn't recognise Brittany, was what he said when he saw her in Canberra 2019, and she didn't disclose the alleged rape to him until the following year. And he gave incredibly emotional evidence about what this sets off in a father's mind when being told this by his daughter.

So, it's worth pointing out that Bruce Lehrmann’s barrister, Stephen Whybrow KC, his whole argument in this trial has been essentially that Brittany Higgins made up the allegation of rape, because she had been caught in a security breach with Bruce Lehrmann and was worried about her job, and that she kind of fell into this version of events that got bigger and bigger and bigger and acquired more and more lies. And one really strategic way that Whybrow is trying to muddy the waters about memory and recall is by saying that when Brittany Higgins gave her version of events in the interview with The Project and Lisa Wilkinson in February 2021, that was the first real public airing of the rape allegation, and that after that fact, people who had been required to come back and think about what had happened in 2019 two years beforehand, Whybrow is arguing that a lot of their recall and their memory is stitched together, having heard those versions of events, but not a not genuine recall from the point in time in 2019. He's constantly putting that to witnesses and trying to insert or at least allege that they're wrong or they've remembered something they thought was a memory, but it was actually something they saw on Channel Ten.

ANGE:

And Rick, it’s pretty extraordinary for a story that was on the front page, news in 2021 to still be dominating headlines in the way it is coming up to three years after that. But will this defamation trial even be the end of this story?

RICK:

Oh God no. No, I'm sure there are other parallels to it in modern history, but there are some stories that just drag everybody into the mud, and everybody who has been named or in any way, even tangentially involved in this story, they've either had their reputation ruined, their careers destroyed, or they've just been put under the gun of public opprobrium. And it's just, it seems to be never ending. And we've got third and fourth generation legal matters now. So we've got police investigation of an alleged rape, which becomes a criminal trial, and then the criminal trial is abandoned for juror misconduct, and then there's an ACT inquiry into the conduct of the criminal trial. And then, of course, we've got just last week Senator Linda Reynolds, who launched defamation action against the ACT government over accusations. Mr. Drumgold, Shane Drumgold, the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, made about her conduct during the legal trial. Let's not forget that Linda Reynolds is also suing, for defamation, Brittany Higgins and separately, Higgins’ partner, David Sharaz. Those haven't yet reached trial, but of course, if they do, then we're going to have another defamation trial, retreading essentially the same old ground.

And of course, once evidence is finished being heard in chief, and the examinations are all over, and the witnesses sit down, and we will go on holidays, Justice Michael Lee is actually going to have to consider all of this evidence. And we know from previous defamation trials, Ben Roberts-Smith being a really good case in point, that this can take months.

Regardless of whatever views you have about how all of this has been handled from the very beginning, you do have to wonder at what toll is taking on every single person involved, because, I mean, it's extraordinarily stressful. I mean, I certainly wonder like, is it worth it at this point to keep rehashing this stuff?

ANGE:

Rick, thanks so much for your time.

RICK:

Thanks Ange, I appreciate it.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today…

Bruce Lehrmann’s barrister Steve Whybrow will subpoena Sky News to produce a recording it has obtained of Brittany Higgins’ lawyer speaking with her partner David Sharaz, discussing her potential testimony, before Ms Higgins appeared in court last week.

The recording, which was made without the knowledge of the people speaking, was referred to on Sharri Markson’s Sky News show.

And…

Steven Miles will be the next premier of Queensland after Health Minister Shannon Fentiman withdrew from the race.

Miles served as Health Minister in Queensland during the COVID pandemic and is the leader of the Labor left faction in Queensland’s parliament.

I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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