How Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation grenade blew up everyone — including himself
The reputational casualty list from Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation action against Channel 10 and presenter Lisa Wilkinson is extensive — and includes himself. Here are the main players — and what the case has cost them so far.
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When Bruce Lehrmann pulled the pin on the defamation hand grenade against Network 10 and presenter Lisa Wilkinson, the last person he expected it to blow up was himself.
Even before former Spotlight presenter Taylor Auerbach appeared at the 11th hour with a 2000-plus-page hand grenade of his own, Justice Michael Lee was having issues with Lehrmann’s credibility.
At stake was Lehrmann’s allegation that an interview on Network 10’s The Project, which did not name him, easily identified him as the man his former Liberal Party colleague Brittany Higgins said raped her in then-defence minister Linda Reynolds office.
By the time Justice Michael Lee retired to consider 15,000 pages of transcripts and more than 1000 exhibits, including CCTV, video and audio recordings, he had already indicated that there were parts of both Lehrmann’s and Higgins’ evidence that did not stack up.
“One of the challenges in this case, it seems to me, is that the two principal witnesses have real credit issues,” he said. “Various parts of each witness’s evidence simply can’t be accepted, it seems to me”.
Lehrmann launched the defamation action off the back of an aborted criminal trial and a second rape trial that was abandoned because of Higgins’ fragile mental health. He strenuously denied the allegations.
His confidence had been further bolstered by out-of-court settlements in two other defamation actions. But then things started to unravel.
Over several days of gruelling cross examination in the witness box, Lehrmann was forced into conceding a string of lies, including telling his boss that he had gone back to Parliament House with Higgins after a night out to drink whisky.
He admitted he had lied to Parliament House security guards on the night, telling them he was going into the office to pick up papers for the defence minister. Instead he said he just needed to pick up his house keys.
Once in the office Lehrmann claimed he sat at his desk, made notes without turning on his computer and left without checking on Higgins, who had gone into the room next door.
Higgins was reduced to tears in the witness box as she was caught in a string of contradictions, including her claim that she woke up with the white dress she was seen wearing on CCTV footage wrapped around her waist.
“I was being raped,” she fired under cross examination. “It wasn’t my primary concern whether my dress was on.
“I was more concerned about the penis in my vagina, that I didn’t want it.”
But after hearing that security guards reported that she was completely naked she conceded she might not have been wearing the dress after all.
She also conceded that she lied to Wilkinson about wearing panties on the night because she was embarrassed that she was not.
Wilkinson’s reputation also took a battering, with one text asserting that then minister Reynolds was “lying through her teeth”, resulting in lawyers saying she had lost her objectivity and blindly believed Higgins’ story.
Justice Lee had finished writing his judgment and was days from delivering it when the former Spotlight producer who had secured Lehrmann’s interview for Seven came forward with bombshell allegations contained in more than 2300 pages of evidence.
The hearing was reopened and Auerbach told how Spotlight paid for meals, accommodation on top of the year’s rent-free apartment in Balgowlah, rounds of golf, drugs, masseuses and prostitutes to secure the interview with Lehrmann.
“Mr Lehrmann had, over dinner, purchased a bag of cocaine while we were dining at Franca, and when we got upstairs to the room, he pulled that out and started to put it on a plate and then started talking to me about a prospective Spotlight story and his desire to order prostitutes to the Meriton that night and began Googling of series of websites to try and make that happen,” Auerbach told the court.
Auerbach admitted his motivation was in part hatred of former Spotlight colleague Steve Jackson, who lost his new position as head of NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb’s media team when the evidence came out.
It also raised questions about Seven’s corporate culture and saw Spotlight’s old-school executive producer Mark Llewelyn leave the network last week.
“This is a man who desperately wanted to do as much damage to his previous employer as he could conceivably do,” Justice Lee said of Auerbach.
“That doesn’t mean he’s not a truth teller.”
Auerbach also said he let Lehrmann into the Seven offices to photocopy legal documents, including texts from Higgins that had been supplied to his lawyers as part of the aborted criminal case.
The network’s lawyers alleged he did so to intimidate Higgins ahead of her giving evidence on behalf of Ten and Wilkinson in the defamation case.
They argued that handing over those documents was in breach of the Harman undertaking that they would not be used for any other purpose, and open Lehrmann to a possible contempt of court.
Earlier in the defamation trial Lehrmann denied handing over the documents and told the court: “I just gave an interview”.
Monday’s judgment will not be the last of Lehrmann’s time in the spotlight.
In June there will be a committal hearing to decide if he will face charges of raping a woman in Toowoomba in October 2021. Lehrmann denies the allegations.
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