Christian Porter discontinues defamation proceedings against ABC

Christian Porter has discontinued his high-stakes defamation claim against the ABC just days after the parties agreed to attend mediation behind closed doors.

Federal Court Justice Tom Thawley had granted an order on Thursday restraining Mr Porter’s former barrister, high-profile defamation silk Sue Chrysanthou, SC, from acting for the federal Liberal minister in the defamation case on the basis that she had previously advised a potential witness for the ABC.

Christian Porter in Parliament on May 27.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

In a statement on Monday, the ABC said Mr Porter “has decided to discontinue his defamation action against the ABC and [journalist] Louise Milligan” over an online story published on February 26 this year.

“All parties have agreed to not pursue the matter any further. No damages will be paid,” the broadcaster said.

The ABC later clarified that “the only costs that the ABC will be paying are the mediation costs”.

The broadcaster said it “stands by the importance of the article, which reported on matters of significant public interest, and the article remains online”.

In an editor’s note on the story, the ABC says the article was “about a letter to the Prime Minister containing allegations against a senior cabinet minister” and the article was about Mr Porter, although he was not named.

The note says the ABC “did not intend to suggest that Mr Porter had committed the criminal offences alleged” and “did not contend that the serious accusations could be substantiated to the applicable legal standard – criminal or civil”.

But it added that “both parties accept that some readers misinterpreted the article as an accusation of guilt against Mr Porter. That reading, which was not intended by the ABC, is regretted.”

The ABC said in its statement that it stood by its investigative and public interest journalism and stood by Milligan, “one of Australia’s foremost and most awarded investigative journalists”.

Mr Porter said outside the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday that the outcome was “a humiliating backdown by the ABC”. The article was “sensationalist”, “one-sided” and written in such a way that people would “assume guilt”.

He said he would run at the next election, was committed to his West Australian seat of Pearce and was not seeking to return as attorney-general after moving to the portfolio of Industry, Science and Technology.

“I never thought that they would concede that the accusations that were put in the article could never be proven ... to the criminal standard or the civil standard.”

He said “you can never turn the clock back on this sort of reporting, and that’s why it’s so wrong”.

In a second statement, published after Mr Porter’s comments, the ABC denied the story was sensationalist.

“It was an accurate and factual report on a letter that had been sent to the Prime Minister and two other senior politicians,” the broadcaster said.

Mr Porter had claimed the article conveyed a range of defamatory claims, including that “brutally raped a 16-year-old girl in 1988” when he was 17, and this contributed to her taking her own life last year, after she told NSW Police that she did not wish to pursue her complaint. Mr Porter strenuously denies the claims.

In a written defence filed in court, 27 pages of which were redacted ahead of an anticipated legal fight between the parties, the ABC said it did not say Mr Porter was guilty of rape or convey any of the other meanings pleaded by him.

However, it said it could prove it was true to say there were “reasonable grounds for suspecting” Mr Porter of the alleged crime, and for suspecting that it contributed to the woman taking her own life. These were among lower-level meanings Mr Porter’s legal team had alleged were conveyed by the article.

The ABC was also seeking to rely on the public interest-style defence of qualified privilege.

The Federal Court had set aside Tuesday and Wednesday this week to hear an application by Mr Porter to strike out significant portions of the ABC’s defence to his defamation claim, which may have knocked out some of its defences entirely.

The parties had asked for an urgent hearing in the Federal Court in Sydney at 2.15pm on Monday before Justice Jayne Jagot, but the hearing was cancelled shortly before it was scheduled to start.

The ABC and Mr Porter attended mediation on Friday in an attempt to settle the dispute out of court. Mediation is common in Federal Court defamation cases.

In an order made with the agreement of the parties on Thursday, Justice Jagot said secrecy orders covering parts of the ABC’s defence did not prevent “any mediator appointed by the parties” from being shown a complete version of the document.

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