Deleted text messages revealed in Christian Porter defamation case
Louise Milligan advised a friend of Christian Porter’s alleged rape victim to delete phone messages, court hears.
ABC journalist Louise Milligan advised a friend of Christian Porter’s alleged rape victim to delete messages they exchanged from her phone, a court has heard.
The woman, Jo Dyer, who is director of the Adelaide Writers Week, told the Federal Court she had wanted the rape allegations against the former attorney-general to be made public after her friend’s death to stop Mr Porter from becoming prime minister one day.
Mr Porter, who is now Industry Minister, is suing the ABC and Milligan over an online article published on February 26, which reported that an unnamed cabinet minister was facing historical rape allegations.
The allegations had been set out in a dossier sent to Scott Morrison, Labor foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong and Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young by anonymous friends of Kate.
Mr Porter outed himself as the unnamed minister at a press conference five days later, and launched the defamation action against the ABC on March 15.
Ms Dyer had become friends in 1986 with the woman, known as Kate, who alleged that she had been raped by Mr Porter 33 years ago when she was 16 years old and he was 17.
Ms Dyer and Kate fell out of contact and then resumed their friendship in August 2019, the court heard on Tuesday.
Ms Dyer said that Kate told her about her alleged rape before she committed suicide in June last year. She said they had discussed how difficult it would be to seek a prosecution against Mr Porter, but that it would be a “measure of success” if he did not ever become prime minister.
Under cross-examination by Mr Porter’s barrister Christopher Withers SC, Ms Dyer said she had believed her friend’s allegation and on that basis agreed that she did not believe he should ever become prime minister.
Ms Dyer is seeking court orders to stop barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC representing Mr Porter in his defamation action the ABC. She is not a party to that defamation action. However, she alleges that she gave Ms Chrysanthou confidential information that was relevant to the defamation case, while the barrister was advising her on another matter.
Mr Porter’s legal team has argued that any information provided by Ms Dyer was not confidential because it was known to the ABC and to others.
During a hearing on Tuesday to decide whether Ms Chrysanthou should be ousted from the case, Ms Dyer said Milligan had first contacted her on WhatsApp three days after Kate’s death, at the suggestion of their mutual friend Nick Ryan.
They quickly moved their conversation to the encrypted messaging service Signal.
“(She) had obviously reinforced that this was a more confidential means of communication,” Ms Dyer told the court.
There had been a “hope” Ms Dyer would delete the messages as they went along but Ms Dyer said she “did not take that care”. Instead, she told the court she deleted those messages “en masse” some months ago.
Asked if this was after she spoke with Milligan, Ms Dyer replied: “I don’t believe so but it’s possible that she may have reminded me that that had been something she had recommended.”
The ABC and Milligan have mounted a defence of qualified privilege which requires them to show that they acted reasonably.
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