Old tweet reveals Lisa Wilkinson was aware of the danger of mentioning Brittany Higgins trial

An old tweet has revealed Lisa Wilkinson was aware of the danger in mentioning Brittany Higgins’ trial publicly, after her speech landed her in serious hot water.

A resurfaced tweet has revealed Lisa Wilkinson was aware of the danger in mentioning Brittany Higgins’ trial well before the Gold Logies on the weekend.

Wilkinson “completely obliterated” the line between an allegation and a finding of guilt, according to ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum, who subsequently postponed the trial of Higgins’ accused rapist Bruce Lehrmann.

But barely a year ago, Wilkinson tweeted that “naming the man on social media and passing judgment could have dire consequences for the outcome of any trial”.

“On the issue of the 26 yo man summonsed for an alleged sexual assault of a woman in Parliament House in March 2019 can I implore everyone to respect what’s in play here,” she tweeted in August 2021.

It came after Australian Bar Association president Dr Matthew Collins told Seven’s Sunrise that The Project host may be in serious trouble following scathing comments by the Chief Justice.

“It’s certainly possible that the authorities will be looking at speech she made to the Logies and assessing that speech went against the standard which applies in this branch of the law,” he said.

“That standard is, did anything that she did have a tendency to interfere with the administration of justice?”

On the issue of the 26 yo man summonsed for an alleged sexual assault of a woman in Parliament House in March 2019 can I implore everyone to respect what’s in play here.

Naming the man on social media & passing judgement could have dire consequences for the outcome of any trial.

— Lisa Wilkinson (@Lisa_Wilkinson) August 6, 2021

Wilkinson “completely obliterated” the line between an allegation and a finding of guilt, Justice McCallum told the court on Tuesday.

Under the ACT Criminal Code, a person can be charged with an offence if they publish “something that could cause a miscarriage of justice in a legal proceeding”.

Doing so intentionally carries a maximum penalty of 1000 penalty units, 10 years imprisonment or both, while doing so recklessly carries a maximum penalty of 700 penalty units, seven years imprisonment or both.

Justice McCallum said she was making the order to delay the planned trial start date on June 27 with “gritted teeth”. “Unfortunately … the recent publicity [of the speech] does, in my view, change the landscape,’’ she said.

“Because of its immediacy, its intensity and its capacity to obliterate the important distinction between an allegation that remains untested at law. For those reasons, regrettably and with gritted teeth, I have concluded that the trial date of 27 June towards which the parties have been carefully steering must be vacated.”

Lisa Wilkinson with Brittany Higgins,

Dr Collins said members of mainstream media “understand the risk inherent in talking about cases which are about to go to trial before courts, particularly serious, high-profile cases”.

“So clearly this was ill-advised,” he said.

“The whole point is that everybody in our community facing a serious charge like this is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and that means that going into the courtroom there should be no preconceptions one way or the other, so that the jury just sits and focuses really keenly on the evidence as it unfolds in the witness box, and puts out of their mind anything which they might have seen in the media, or God forbid and often far worse, in social media.”

A Network 10 spokeswoman acknowledged the court’s decision and said the network “fully supports” Wilkinson.

– with Frank Chung