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ASHLYNNE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ashlynne McGhee. This is 7am.

It’s now been a week since a Federal Court judge ruled Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittney Higgins in a Minister’s office at Parliament House back in 2019.

In other cases, that might have been a full stop, nothing more to see here. But this case has been more like a telenovela, with dozens of characters dragged into a plot that’s twisted and turned over months and months. Heads have rolled, reputations have been shredded and now an entire TV network now looks like it could implode.

Today, senior reporter for The Saturday Paper Rick Morton, on why even though Bruce Lehrmann lost, the media hasn’t won.

It’s Monday, April 22.

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ASHLYNNE:

Rick, you've sat hunched over your laptop, watching hours and hours of Bruce Lehrmann's defamation case, but so have so many others. I wonder what it is about this case that captivated us. Like, why do so many people have a stake in it?

RICK:

I actually really love that question, because I think it kind of goes to the heart of what a lot of people experience nowadays when you have these debates about right or wrong and kind of moral areas where it's all become political and, you know, what happened, we now know is that the Federal Court has found that Brittany Higgins was raped on the balance of probabilities in Parliament House by Bruce Lehrmann.

Audio Excerpt – Justice Lee:

“Mr. Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins. I hasten to stress, this is a finding on the balance of probabilities. These findings should not be misconstrued or mischaracterised as a finding that I can truly exclude all reasonable hypotheses consistent with innocence”

RICK:

What this case has now done is ironically, it's been a defamation case brought by Bruce Lehrmann to restore his reputation has actually backfired tremendously

Audio Excerpt – Justice Lee:

“His attempt to explain the way by suggesting the attraction he felt for Ms Higgins was just like ‘the attraction I can feel to anyone else in this courtroom, irrespective of gender’ was as disconcerting as it was unconvincing.”

RICK:

And brought us all back to the original element, which was that Brittany Higgins was raped by him. She did not give her consent. And as Judge Michael Lee found Mr. Lehrmann was indifferent to whether or not she had ever even consented.

Audio Excerpt – Justice Lee:

“His pursuit of gratification, he did not care one way or the other whether Michigan's understood or agreed to what was going on.”

RICK:

And this has all but destroyed what little reputation he had left by the time even got to this moment. He's someone that the judge called a cad, a liar, and of course, now a rapist. In this 2.5 hour verdict, which was live streamed to at one point, almost 50,000 people. You know, so many people have been engaged in this.

Audio Excerpt – Justice Lee:

“For more than a few, this dispute has become a proxy for broader cultural and political conflicts. This judgment is not written for people who have made up their mind before any evidence was adduced, or are content to rest upon preconceived opinions. It is written to sit out my factual findings comprehensively and explain my decision to the parties, and to the open and fair minded”

RICK:

Most of it, myself included, have been watching the YouTube feed, which, just as Michael Lee has insisted on being available so that people could see from start to finish because the criminal trial was aborted due to juror misconduct. So Bruce Lehrmann was neither found guilty or innocent. There was no verdict. And as Justice Lee said, as a result of the inconclusive criminal trial, Mr. Lehrmann remains a man who has not been convicted of any offense. But he has now been found, by the civil standard of proof, to have engaged in a great wrong. And of course, Lehrmann always denied that he raped Higgins or that they even had sexual contact. And it was always open to him to appeal, of course, but even if he had won this case, Justice Lee said that he would only have been entitled to about $20,000 in compensation, which wouldn't have covered the legal bills. Because he is only entitled to be compensated for the reputation he deserves. And so I think this case has hopefully to a lot of people been a little bit of a wake up call that not everything is some kind of high school debating competition about, you know, political cover up and all the rest of it. But it's about interpersonal relationships and what you can and can't do as a human being living in the world. And of course, because this thing became so blown out of proportion into all these other realms and theatres of life, so many more people became drawn into it and lost their own reputations and destroyed their own credibility in even having minimal contact with this case, which just kind of swallowed everything in its path.

ASHLYNNE:

Our profession didn't exactly come out of this case looking great. I mean, it's a win for Channel Ten, for Lisa Wilkinson, but it's not really a win for the media as a whole, and particularly not at Seven, one of Australia's biggest media organisations. What is going on there?

RICK:

Oh, God. I mean, some of the biggest fallout that has been at Channel Seven, a network notably not being sued by Bruce Lehrmann in a defamation suit, but which has come out of this way worse than Channel Ten, but Channel Seven that it kind of swept in to get this with what they thought was going to be the story or the interview of the year with Bruce Lehrmann. And of course, it’s dragged almost everybody under. We’ll start with the most recent, I guess. So late last week after the defamation trial, it concluded with all the early resignation of the CEO of Channel 7 or 7 West Media James Warburton,

Audio Excerpt – News Reader:

“In just some breaking news, Seven West Media, owner of the Seven Television Network, has just released to the ASX that chief executive James Warburton will leave immediately.”

RICK:

Because there had been a series of these scandals, most notably in the realm of financial and expense scandals with the Sunrise programme, but also the Bruce Lehrmann Spotlight TV interview, where, of course, the defamation trial heard sensationally at the last minute after it had already closed, that there were potential reimbursements for sex workers and cocaine. And of course, all of this information was never divulged to the defamation trial, despite subpoenas being issued twice. Matthew Allen, the executive producer of Spotlight, he is no longer employed by channel seven despite the fact that seven maintains that it's acted appropriately at all times

Audio Excerpt – Media Watch:

“It really is the story that keeps on giving or if you're caught in the maelstrom, the story that keeps on taking. With Seven confirming today that Mark Llewellyn, the MP of Spotlight, which ran exclusive interviews with Lehrmann, is no longer with the network”

RICK:

It was confirmed on the morning of the judgment. But of course then we've got the two people under Mark Llewellyn, which is Steve Jackson and Taylor Allback, who are or were, I should say, really close friends and worked together at the Daily Telegraph. Now, of course, all of this exploded. All back essentially brought this all up in public, in signed affidavits to get back at Steve Jackson, his former friend, with whom he's had a falling out, to kill Steve Jackson's chance at a $300,000 a year New South Wales Police commissioner Media job which worked. And so this reopened the case and of course, now Channel Seven has been dragged completely under. And of course, when you really think about this one night in Parliament House in March 2019, nobody would have predicted that Channel Seven of all places would be kind of dragged into the undertow, because of the behaviour of a bunch of, their staffers in trying to get an interview with an alleged rapist at that point.

ASHLYNNE:

Listening to that list of names and the list of, I guess stuff that's happened is probably a bit of an understatement to say the network is in crisis talks at the moment, right. Like, can it survive this - is it imploding?

RICK:

I mean, media is the wild west in Australia. It always has been. And Kerry Stokes, quite literally the Wild West, over in WA. They've always kind of played by their own rules, but I think standards are changing. I guess there are two prongs to this, right? So there's Kerry Stokes being the proprietor of Channel Seven and having this kind of insatiable desire, I guess, to sweep in and rehabilitate the reputations of some of the worst men in Australia, Ben Roberts-Smith being the most obvious example, who is a war criminal. And we can say that now because he lost the defamation case that was being bankrolled by Kerry Stokes. Well, the entire team that worked on the Bruce Lehrmann story is now gone. And also, how long can a proprietor back a loser? I mean, the company has obligations to its shareholders and to you know, its employees from a duty of care standpoint. There was enough of a moral scandal that that even bothered to try to rehabilitate both Lehrmann in the first place. But, the fact that we ever got documentary evidence, that Channel Seven had kind of paid Bruce Lehrmann way more than they'd ever publicly said they had, but also because of the intervention of Roll Back, the producer. We had the incontrovertible proof as Justice Michael Lee put it, there was no other way to find this that Bruce Lehrmann handed over documents that were only available to him and only for the criminal trial, handed them over to Channel Seven. It's like a clown car of bad decisions that have emanated from this. It's not looking good.

ASHLYNNE:

After the break, why almost no one involved in this case emerged unscathed…

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ASHLYNNE:

Rick, when you began to look at the number of people that these cases swept up, where did you even start?

RICK:

There's the media quarter. There's obviously the political quarter, which is kind of where it begins, right? It begins at Parliament House. And one of the first people to find out about this was the chief of staff to Linda Reynolds, who was the defence minister at the time, Fiona Brown, and then Linda Reynolds. And they were both technically the bosses of Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins, who were both political advisers to the defence minister. The rape happened in her office on her couch. In fact, when that became public, there were immediately stories that Linda Reynolds had shouted in front of public servants, not just her own officers, but public servants, that Brittany Higgins was a "lying cow". Now, Reynolds always asserted that it wasn't in the context that people had heard it, that she meant it. She wasn't alleging that Brittany had made up the rape, but in any case, it was so badly handled that she ended up paying compensation to Brittany Higgins for even saying it in the first place. She apologised. So just before the Project interview went to air in 2021, Brittany Higgins was working for Senator Michaelia Cash, Higgins knew that there was going to be a lot of scrutiny coming. So Brittany Higgins took the extraordinary step of covertly recording both the chief of staff, a few weeks before having a telephone conference with the chief of staff and Michaelia Cash. And she recorded both of those incidents essentially as assurance that she wouldn't be kind of swept away. And there seemed to be a lot of, certainly crossed wires depending on which version you believe. But these are the political kind of people who were involved in the first instance, which then gets led to - is there a deeper problem here in Canberra?

ASHLYNNE:

Rick, when it comes to the people who are still grappling with the fallout from all of this, what about the people who walked out of this as, I guess, the winners being cleared of defamation? Lisa Wilkinson, The Project, Channel Ten. Is it over for them or is there more to come now?

RICK:

I mean, undoubtedly they view themselves as winners. They dodged the legal bullet of the century.

Audio Excerpt – Lisa Wilkinson:

“I sincerely hope that this judgement gives strength to women around the country”.

RICK:

And Lisa Wilkinson obviously gave a press conference immediately afterwards or a doorstop interview anyway, where she was vindicated. Essentially, she was a woman who told the story of a woman who had been raped in Parliament House, and she's proud of that and she should be. She gave voice to a victim of sexual assault. That's what we should be doing. But I don't think it does it any good to completely gloss over the harms that were done to journalism throughout, including by the Project team, which Justice Michael Lee is very open about.

Audio Excerpt – Justice Lee:

“They resolved from the start to publish the exclusive Story and were content to do the minimum required to reduce unacceptable litigation risk.”

RICK:

In fact, he said it time Channel Ten acted in grossly inappropriate ways, grossly improper conduct particularly you know, when Lisa Wilkinson, is nominated and wins Silver Logie for the interview and gets up and does his big Logie speech, it was incredibly reckless

Audio Excerpt – Justice Lee:

“First was her refusal to make the obvious concession in response to her cross-examining his questions at her speech at the 67th Annual TV-Week Logies awards on 19th June 2022, conveyed the message that Michigans was credible and to be believed, and therefore by necessary implication, that her allegation of rape was true.”

RICK:

Now, Lisa Wilkinson was correct in saying that she had that speech legalled. But Channel Ten's in-house counsel said there was no problem with saying any of it whatsoever and refused, even on evidence to say that she had any regrets about it, even though they wrote in a grovelling apology to the Chief Justice of the ACT “We're so sorry. We're so sorry. Please. You know, we never intended any of this”. I mean, every cadet journalist knows that you don't commit sub-judice contempt. If something is before a court, you have to be exceedingly careful about what you can and can't say. It's one of the things that make the Fourth Estate. The Fourth Estate is that we actually do have obligations to these things, as opposed to public commentary, where you can say whatever you feel like. And so these are all things that, while The Project, Channel Ten, Lisa Wilkinson, all of them will be filling about 20 kilos lighter after this case has ended, and rightfully so. But I think that journalism deserves good standard bearers everywhere, and it's easy to almost poke fun at Channel Seven for how much they keep stepping on the same rake. But, from the point of view of protecting someone who's making a serious allegation of sexual assault and their own trauma, are we actually protecting the people who are making these claims by doing our jobs properly? Because if we don't do our jobs, they cop it. And really, as we all know now, Brittany Higgins has copped it.

ASHLYNNE:

So she's one person we haven't discussed yet because I guess she wasn't a party to this defamation case, even though she's so central to it and was probably affected more than anyone. What does this all mean for her now?

RICK:

That is a great question. I mean, she wasn't invited to the case, and yet her credibility alongside Bruce Lehrmann was central to it. We didn't have a criminal trial outcome. This is the only court case we have now where we have a verdict that you can rely on with some degree of clarity. Balance of probabilities in a civil case is not, as Justice Michael Lee said, It's not just a simple what is the most likely outcome. That's not the test. The test for a judge is what are the most likely outcomes of all of the things put together. And then also, are they inherently believable? And do you believe it? That is the test. And Justice Michael Lee has done that in the affirmative for Brittany Higgins. He says that she was raped by Bruce Lehrmann. That in itself, after all these years of her just being completely pilloried and kind of drawn between different debates in the public sphere. She was still thrown to the wolves through this whole ordeal. So, Linda Reynolds has said, even after the defamation judgement that she would continue to sue as she currently is, Brittany Higgins and her fiancé, David Torres for defamation for social media posts that they made outside of the court process. It's kind of like a concertina effect of this kind of ripple of, of life after life after life been kind of irrevocably altered in many respects and certainly, either brought into disrepute or just kind of been forced to deal with an extraordinary pressure of this case because of that one night in a just if you draw the link between them, you wouldn't be able to forecast this. People would say that you're crazy. But of course, we now know from the last five years that's exactly what happened.

ASHLYNNE:

Rick, thank you so much for the chat. Thanks.

RICK:

Thanks, Ashlynne and welcome, it's good to have you here

ASHLYNNE:

Thank you. Nice to be on board.

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ASHLYNNE:

Also in the news today…

Brittany Higgins has spoken for the first time since the Bruce Lehrmann defamation verdict. In a statement released over the weekend, she said she hoped media organisations that gave Bruce Lehrmann public platforms to quote “maintain his lies” would reflect on their actions. She also said she was sorry that people like former-minister Linda Reynolds and former-Chief of Staff Fiona Brown had also been hurt during the years-long saga that followed her disclosure.

And.,

The United States Congress has passed a multi-billion dollar military aid package for both Ukraine and Israel. The deal includes around 60 billion US dollars for Ukraine, as well as 26 billion US dollars in military support for Israel, with just over 9 billion of that allocated to humanitarian aid for Gaza.

I’m Ashlynne McGhee, this is 7am. Thanks for listening, see you here tomorrow.

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