Bruce Lehrmann testimony leaves crucial questions unanswered

Bruce Lehrmann, left; Lisa Wilkinson, top right; Mr Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins at Parliament House. Pictures: Christian Gilles / NCA NewsWire, Channel 7

This was the moment Bruce Lehrmann had demanded – the chance to publicly explain his ­actions on the night Brittany Higgins claims he raped her.

Yet if anyone was hoping for a clear explanation of why he left Higgins alone on a sofa in Parliament House in the early hours of the morning without checking on her – his own version of events – they would have been dis­appointed.

In the witness box on Thursday morning, on day two of his defamation action against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, the former Liberal staffer was emphatic he did not sexually assault Higgins.

“Absolutely not,” he declared, in answer to a question from his barrister, Steven Whybrow SC.

The reason he’d gone to Parliament House after a night out drinking with other staff, including Higgins, he said, was to “swing by to get my keys”.

Higgins said she had to go to Parliament House as well, he said, so he offered her a lift in his Uber.

He said he didn’t ask her any questions about why she wanted to go to Parliament House in the early hours of the morning.

“I don’t recall asking with any specificity why she needed to be there,” he said.

He told security he needed to pick up some documents, but admitted that was “not accurate”. He was there to pick up his keys, he said, but thought if he’d told the security guards that, they would have said “Bugger off and come back next week”.

Lisa Wilkinson at the Federal Court in Sydney. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Swift

Asked how drunk Higgins was, he said “mid-range intoxication … she was perfectly fine functioning”.

The court was played an edited compilation of parliamentary CCTV footage of Lehrmann and Higgins arriving at Parliament House and being shown up to the ministerial suite by a security guard.

Lehrmann said when they went into the office, he turned left to where his desk was and Higgins turned right at the reception desk, towards the minister’s personal suite.

At Whybrow’s request, Lehrmann drew a sketch of the path he took on a floorplan of the office.

He said he wrote up handwritten notes on question time briefs at his desk for 30 to 40 minutes, then realised he had missed calls and left through the back door.

“Did you have any further interaction with Ms Higgins?” Whybrow asked.

“No.”

“Did you make any inquiries as to the whereabouts of Miss Higgins?”

“I did not.”

“Why not?”

Bruce Lehrmann at the Federal Court in Sydney. Picture: John Feder

“I wasn’t even sure that she was still there, and I’d indicated as I entered as well that I would get what I need and head off. I thought that was sufficient.”

Overall, it had just been “an innocuous evening, a social Friday night”, he said.

He had no particular recollection of interacting with Higgins on the Monday after the incident.

Whybrow asked whether senator Linda Rey­nolds’s chief of staff, Fiona Brown, had questioned him about the incident.

“I believe she did ask, she would have, I’m just, I’m struggling to get back there … I believe that I said I came back to drink some whiskey, something like that … her tone was very tense.”

Lehrmann said he was nervous because of references to breach of security. He admitted he hadn’t come to the office to drink whiskey but claimed he’d lied because “if I was to tell her that I was working on the question time brief, she might have took that to be an even greater security breach”.

In the afternoon, Ten’s counsel, Matt Collins KC, began his cross-examination, methodically extracting a concession from Lehrmann that he had been “mistaken” when he told police he didn’t have any alcohol in his office, in a record of interview tendered at his criminal trial.

“When did you realise it was false?” Collins asked.

“Oh, I don’t recall when,” Lehrmann replied.

On it went, the 28-year-old steadfastly refusing to agree he had allowed the statement to go to the jury uncorrected.

When the court adjourned, Collins had not yet arrived at the actual events of the night that lie at the heart of the case.

Friday promises to be a pivotal moment in the life of Bruce ­Lehrmann.