Nick Ryan: Porter repeated something he said at the press conference 13 months ago when all this began

Porter expended all his energies, and other people’s money, on defamation actions he didn’t see through, the suppression of the other side’s evidence, and claiming victory in retreat, writes Nick Ryan.

Last Tuesday, stepping out from the shadow of a looming budget and into a mostly empty parliamentary chamber, Christian Porter gave his valedictory speech.

The man some believed when he touted his potential as a future prime minister was changing course, heading home instead of towards The Lodge, and taking his bulging Blind Trust with him. They say you can’t put a price on public service but apparently you can.

It was only at the end did he touch on why this speech was his last as an MP.

“And then I experienced a mob, people so utterly convinced in their own judgment that they didn’t need anything other than their own judgment and people that would cut through any law or abandon any process that might get between them and the target of their judgment,” he said.

As a member of that “mob”, I need to point out that Porter has – again – misrepresented our actions.

A letter was sent to Prime Minister Scott Morrison and senators Penny Wong and Sarah Hanson-Young in late February 2021 concerning the now well-known allegations made by Kate against the then-Attorney-General. Its purpose was to implore them to find a way that these allegations could be properly investigated.

As one of Kate’s friends named in that letter, I know full well it was never about the abandonment of process but rather the exact opposite. It was a request for a torch. Not the kind that set fire to stakes but the kind that shone light in the dark.

The shortcomings of the criminal justice system were exposed when Kate took her life in June 2020. A trial can’t proceed without a live accuser and the NSW Police had shut the file so swiftly it made a noise sounding a lot like relief.

Christian Porter MP gives his Valedictory Speech at Parliament House on March 29. Picture: Martin Ollman/Getty Images

There was no law here to cut through and the abandonment of process lies in a system that definitively says rape allegations die with those who make them.

Kate isn’t the only person to have found the burden of bringing such matters into the light too much to bear. But she was the one making them about the country’s Attorney-General and they had already started to leak into that part of the public domain where rumour resides.

They had to be tested. But, instead, Porter expended all his energies, and other people’s money, on defamation actions he didn’t see through, the suppression of the other side’s evidence, and holding press conferences on court steps claiming victory in retreat.

Rarely has an accused man dodged so many opportunities to make his case.

Nobody will deny there have been horribly hateful things said about Porter on the unhinged outer fringes of public discourse. The same has happened to Kate. Some even made it to newspaper front pages. But that, apparently, is brave loyalty on the part of his friends.

In his final speech, Porter repeated something he said at the press conference 13 months ago when all this began, that the rubbery rule of law must be protected because if this could happen to him it could happen to others.

I don’t believe that. False accusations of rape are incredibly rare. Justifiable ones are hard enough to make stick.

So when people say “ I fear for my sons” because Porter says this could happen to them, too, the question they need to ask themselves, if they genuinely believe he is upholding the rule of law to protect them, is not “if” or “when” it could happen, but “why”.