Want to hear from Bruce Lehrmann about the justice system? That will be $100 a ticket, please

Despite the recent bout of unfortunate publicity surrounding Bruce Lehrmann’s alleged penchant for cocaine and sex workers, the former Liberal Party staffer is still top billing for an event being organised by #MenToo advocate Bettina Arndt.

“The presumption of innocence has been tossed aside in favour of believe-all-women justice,” says Arndt in the promotional material for the Restoring the Presumption of Innocence conference to be held at an unnamed location in the Sydney suburb of Rushcutters Bay in June.

Bettina Arndt at her home in 2018.Credit: Joshua Morris

Controversial barrister Margaret Cunneen, SC, a strong supporter of Lehrmann, is also speaking at the conference, to be held the same month as Lehrmann’s committal hearing for an alleged sexual assault in Toowoomba is set to start. Lehrmann’s lawyers have indicated he intends to plead not guilty.

Arndt has been one of Lehrmann’s central supporters, and friends claim she had been helping to raise funds for Lehrmann. “I know she was trying to help him out financially as he was completely skint,” said one, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution from other Lehrmann supporters.

This was categorically denied by Arndt. Asked whether she had raised money for him or asked anyone to pay money to Lehrmann, she said, “no, never” before hanging up.

Arndt said the Restoring the Presumption of Innocence conference was being hosted by the so-called Australians for Science and Freedom. The organisation’s website says it is a “diverse group of Australian clinicians, academics, lawyers and public intellectuals who united in growing disquiet at federal and state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic”.

Tickets will probably cost $80 to $100 per person, which will include a sandwich lunch and morning tea. Arndt called for volunteers to help run the day, including anyone who could offer “assistance with airfares/accommodation”.

An online fundraiser attached to the event has raised $5115 towards its goal of $10,000.

According to her blog, Arndt’s denunciation of feminism and advocacy for men’s rights stems from her alarm at the “unfair treatment of men in our society”.

“In our believe-the-victim culture it appears that the truth counts for very little,” said the Order of Australia recipient, who has previously described Brittany Higgins as “a lying, scheming bimbo who destroyed a man’s life to save her career and conned her way into $3 million compensation payout, all taxpayer’s money”.

Lehrmann was tried for the alleged rape of Higgins in Parliament House in 2019. The trial collapsed in October 2022 due to juror misconduct. He denied the claims.

It later emerged that the previous October, while on bail for the Higgins matter, Lehrmann had allegedly sexually assaulted a Toowoomba woman he’d met in a nightclub.

“Another gold-digger goes after Bruce Lehrmann,” Arndt wrote on her blog of the Toowoomba allegations.

On the first day of Lehrmann’s defamation case against the Ten Network and journalist Lisa Wilkinson in November 2023, Arndt was on hand to lend support to Lehrmann. She noted in her blog that she was struck “by the number of eager young female journalists keen to get in – no doubt many from the Brittany Higgins cheer squad”.

She also suggested that “the predominantly female members of the press gallery … are products of our captured universities which are dutifully churning out cultural warriors always ready to turn a blind eye to the war on men. It’s a chilling thought that these women are our future.”

The men’s advocate also tuned in to Lehrmann’s Spotlight interview of June 2023. “Including that critical audio recording in the Channel Seven television interview was bound to be a turning point – as it has indeed proved to be,” she wrote.

“I can’t begin to do justice to the revelations now emerging – the excellent Janet Albrechtsen and other journalists at The Australian are pushing out story after story spelling these out.”

Arndt could not have foreseen just what a turning point the “critical audio” has been, with the Ten Network allowed to re-open the Lehrmann case because of it.

Former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach told the Federal Court last week that Lehrmann had provided confidential material from his criminal trial in breach of what is known as the “Harman undertaking” to Seven.

Several pieces of reporting by The Australian also appear to have included confidential material from the criminal trial.

Asked on Sunday whether she had received material contrary to the Harman undertaking, Albrechtsen replied:“I am not answering that question.” She referred this masthead to The Australian’s reporting, which she said “has been stellar”.

Matthew Collins, SC, representing the Ten Network, told the court that Lehrmann’s conduct in handing over confidential material, if accepted, would be an “outrageous contempt of court”.

Penalties for this kind of contempt of court can result in fines or imprisonment.

In June 2021, Victorian Supreme Court Justice John Dixon fined an orthopaedic surgeon $5000 for using material obtained in court to damage a rival surgeon. “The obligations of a Harman undertaking are significant for the proper administration of justice because protecting the confidentiality of documents produced to a court under compulsion of a subpoena is important to engender community confidence and respect for the administration of justice,” said the judge.

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