Confused? Join the club. The Bruce Lehrmann story I can’t bring you

Bruce Lehrmann outside the Supreme Court in Sydney on Monday. Picture: Flavio Brancaleone

Just when you thought the twists and turns of the Lehrmann saga might have reached their zenith, another most curious chapter unfolded on Monday.

If you are confused about the story we have published, join the club. The really vexing part is that I am forbidden from fully informing you about this latest chapter to the Lehrmann-Higgins imbroglio.

Here’s what I can tell you. Late on Monday afternoon, Chief Justice Lucy McCallum in the ACT Supreme Court released her judgment from last December relating to why she suppressed details of an application brought by Bruce Lehrmann after the mistrial was declared last year.

What is far more interesting than that judgment is what I cannot tell you.

ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum. Picture: Canberra Times

I can’t tell you why that December 2, 2022, judgment only became public on Monday.

Nor can I tell you anything about the nature of the “application” that CJ McCallum alludes to that sparked the judgment that she released on Monday. The nature of that application brought by Lehrmann and his lawyers after the mistrial, and before the DPP decided not to retry Lehrmann, remains secret by decree of the court.

I can tell you that on the same day, just hours before CJ McCallum released her judgment about this unreportable application, the Sofronoff Inquiry got underway in Canberra. That inquiry, led by Walter Sofronoff KC, with an opening statement from Erin Longbottom SC, is inquiring into the conduct of the AFP, the DPP and the ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner during the Lehrmann-Higgins saga.

ACT director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold leaves the ACT Supreme Court.

Was the timing of these two events coincidental? Or were they linked? I can’t tell you. I don’t think I’m allowed to.

And that’s what’s really rotten about this state of affairs: I am not even entirely sure what I can and cannot tell you. So I have to take the safe course and say less, not more. This is surely untenable in an open and healthy democracy.

Breaching a suppression order and a non-publication order is serious business. And I am not minded to be charged with, let alone find myself being found guilty of committing, a criminal offence.

Therefore, despite my strongest instincts to keep readers fully informed about every part of the Lehrmann saga, including this latest chapter involving our criminal justice system, I can’t.

Welcome to ‘open’ justice in 2023. It feels decidedly closed, even Kafkaesque.

What I can say, or more accurately ask, on behalf of Australians who believe in the overriding principle of open justice is this:

Given that a judge must have very sound reasons to suppress the nature of a legal application – because it is prima facie antithetical to open justice – are the reasons relied upon by the judge in December last year to prevent Australians from knowing about the nature of Lehrmann’s application still relevant more than four months later? Once I know the answer to that I will be sure to let you know.