Taylor Auerbach took us down the rabbit hole – and Justice Lee brought us back

As is so often the case, it was the feminazis that spoiled it for everyone. There we all were, enjoying the most colourful diversion to date in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation suit, popcorn emojis flying between members of the political, legal and media classes (and in the case of one media lawyer, actual popcorn being consumed).

Former Seven producer Taylor Auerbach was in da house, chucking bombs like a commando with a bad case of worms just as the case was meant to be finalised.

Taking matters in his stride: Taylor Auerbach leaves Federal Court on Friday, with his solicitor Rebekah Giles by his side.Credit: Janie Barrett

Lehrmann had a penchant for sex workers and cocaine, we heard, and Seven had paid for him to enjoy them as it courted him to appear on its Spotlight program. Why, here was the invoice! The $750 spent on call girls and cocaine had been written down as “pre-production expenses”, Auerbach said.

And senior producers were aware of this; they had offered Auerbach a promotion after he told them, but no there was no written record of that, and he knew that Seven had denied it had occurred. The denials by Seven were wrong, he insisted.

Once he knew the interview was in the bag, he sent a message to his boss: “I’ve got the yarn, I’ve just been out on the piss with Bruce”.

Reminded of this message in court, he could not but help share the court’s undoubted disapproval.

“It was a rather inelegant way of saying I’d had a social encounter with Mr Lehrmann and I felt confident we were going to get the story,” he translated for Justice Michael Lee.

With zingers like this, it was easy to forget that Brittany Higgins sat at the same stand last year, gulping back tears, as she described waking up to Lehrmann sweating on top of her in the ministerial suite of their then boss Linda Reynolds in March 2019.

Lehrmann denies this occurred. His life was also ruined when Ten aired the allegation, without naming him, in an interview conducted by Lisa Wilkinson on the Project two years later, he says.

Auerbach pressed his testimony earnestly, making eye contact with the judge. Well, it was true that he hated his former boss these days, but that had nothing to do with him offering his recollections now. Despite the attacks on his credibility and motivations by Lehrmann’s barrister, Matthew Richardson, SC, Auerbach only wanted to help the court.

And it had been difficult wooing a customer like Lehrmann, who was not convinced that a television interview would help his case. Auerbach had sat down with Lehrmann’s then adviser John Macgowan in Canberra around the time of the criminal trial (which was aborted due to juror misconduct), and they discussed what the program would look like and what kind of financial compensation Lehrmann might require.

“It wouldn’t just be a straight interview, they also had audio footage of Ms Higgins talking to Lisa Wilkinson and being coached and talking with the [Australian Federal Police] about how she could turn on and off the waterworks, basically material that would be very important in putting the story to air,” he explained.

Lee was prepared to indulge Ten’s last-minute application to introduce evidence from Auerbach on the day he planned to deliver his judgment, and to let it run into a second day – and even for it to traverse into the bizarre inner workings of a television news program that was not the subject of the defamation claim. But having allowed this pony to have its head for the better part of two days, there came a time to pull on the reins.

Auerbach went on: “[Lehrmann] said he appreciated that I wasn’t sitting with the rest of the feminazis in the press pack ...”

Lee stopped him then and addressed the counsel for Network Ten. “I’m just concerned how far we are going down what is increasingly looking like a rabbit hole,” he said.

It was a question of relevance, Lee said. This appeared to be a backdoor way to introduce material prejudicial to Lehrmann.

“I allowed the reopening of the case in order to adduce evidence which you told me would be relevant to the credit of Mr Lehrmann in relation to the answers that he gave on oath before me … I’m afraid we’re straying beyond that territory. I want to put this back in a box.”

Box? The genie was out. In Thursday’s evidence, Auerbach had told the court that a video broadcast to the court that he had filmed of himself snapping a colleague’s golf clubs was a parody of another video made by Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn. It was only fair that the original version now be played to the court.

And so it was that Llewellyn appeared on screen in court, exhibiting the same grimace that Auerbach had worn in his own video, as he wrung out a black towel to the sounds of Rivers of Babylon. Lee watched with a resigned smile. “Yes all right,” he sighed. “The Boney M accompanied video can be exhibit R902″.

The sideshow had taken a life of its own, and in the interests of fairness, it needed to run its course.