Here and there: Why Peta Credlin was name checked in two separate defamation trials

Once again, defamation trials have shown their preternatural ability to draw in bystanders with little or no direct relevance to the case.

Only 13 sleeps to go until the defamation trial/political grudge match between state Opposition Leader John Pesutto and banished women’s rights MP Moira Deeming gets under way. Now it is the turn of the journalists and commentators to get name-checked in the Federal Court.

Sky News presenter Peta Credlin.Credit: Sky News

For those who came late, Pesutto is being sued for defamation by Deeming. She was expelled from the Liberal parliamentary party last year after she attended the Let Women Speak rally, which was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.

On Tuesday barristers were engaged in argument over the late production of documents and, of course, costs. In the Federal Court, Matt Collins, KC, (representing Pesutto) named a string of journalists who had communicated with Deeming in messages. The messages were not released and we didn’t get to hear about other exchanges between journalists and MPs. The press gallery journalists mentioned were Sky’s Simon Love, the Herald Sun’s Shannon Deery, the ABC’s Richard Willingham, and The Age’s Sumeyya Ilanbey and Annika Smethurst, as well as the Sky News commentator Peta Credlin.

Collins did not go into specifics but told the court the communications showed a “quite extraordinary degree of engagement between Mrs Deeming and journalists from all media outlets, including at times, seeking and following advice from journalists about how to maximise the damage she could inflict on Mr Pesutto”.

What exactly does “at times” mean? And there are likely more journalists who have interacted with Deeming, we suspect. Watch this space, we guess.

Then late in the day, the Linda Reynolds defamation case in Perth heard that Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz had sought the assistance of the media in drafting an early statement to the media. Who provided that advice? Peta Credlin, the court was told.

Credlin told Sky News viewers on Tuesday that she had been in contact with the government and the couple but later ceased contact with them.

We reached out to Credlin on the Deeming case, who told us: “I have never said anything privately to Moira Deeming that I haven’t said publicly on my program or in print. I have tried to urge John Pesutto to settle this case and avoid damaging the Liberal Party any further, but he’s obstinate as well as wrong because all Moira did was defend the rights of women and girls to spaces of our own. And who can’t support that?”

Lord Mayor Nicholas Reece

RECYCLING POLICY

Our derisory descriptor of local government as the bottom tier of democracy is getting truer by the day. Take incumbent lord mayor Nicholas Reece, who slid into the top job in a most undemocratic manner after Sally Capp quit her post early (a move foreshadowed by us) after a voyage of internal discovery to Antarctica. Crucially, the Capp retirement was close enough to polling day to allow her deputy to step up and avoid the pesky democratic requirement of a byelection. Cute, huh?

Now some of Reece’s opponents think he is recycling their policies.

Take the e-scooter ban. Former acting lord mayor and Reece rival Arron Wood announced he wanted to ban them in the Hoddle Grid, then Reece went a step further and banned them across the City of Melbourne. The timing was awkward because the council was about to vote on a motion for new e-scooter safety measures.

Former AFL legend and Reece rival Anthony Koutoufides announced a policy to convert office space to residential space. Reece has announced he wants to do the same.

Wood told CBD: “The old saying that imitation is the highest form of flattery is apt in this case. I am really proud to be setting a positive agenda to what matters to Melburnians.”

And Koutoufides said: “I’m pleased they have seen the value in my thinking. However, I’m also conscious that others have had several years to get these ideas going. It’s a priority of mine and will be treated as such if I am elected”.

In riposte, Reece said converting office space had been a policy since the Postcode 3000 planning policies in the 1990s. “This is not new.”

And the mimicry of his e-scooters ban? “I just got sick of picking up scooters off the footpath. I was fed up.”

PROMINENT NO SHOW

Men’s rights activist Bettina Arndt’s “presumption of innocence” conference held in Sydney on the weekend fizzled after the star attraction, colourful lawyer Zali Burrows – who’s representing Bruce Lehrmann in his defamation appeal – failed to show.

No show: Zali Burrows said she pulled out of the conference after being “bullied, intimidated and threatened”.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Arndt, best known for publicly defending the man jailed for raping former Australian of the Year Grace Tame, initially booked Lehrmann as a speaker, before the former Liberal staffer pulled out after Federal Court judge Michael Lee found, on the balance of probabilities, that he’d raped former colleague Brittany Higgins.

Despite being added to the program, Burrows – a one-time United Australia Party candidate, better known for a colourful criminal defence client list that includes convicted fraudster Salim Mehajer and various underworld identities – was nowhere to be seen.

Arndt told attendees Burrows was being intimidated by “the witches, the mad feminists on social media”.

And on Tuesday, the lawyer said she’d “regrettably” pulled out of the conference after being “bullied, intimidated and threatened”.

“I have put up with a lot in the past from nut jobs and stalkers, I thought better to stay home to paint my nails than to compromise my safety,” she told CBD in a statement, adding that she was concerned about jeopardising her work for Lehrmann by getting involved in a controversial conference.

“Further, I am mindful of the harassment and criticism I am receiving for representing Bruce Lehrmann in his defamation appeal, [in] which he is arguably the most hated man in Australia,” she said.

“I did not want to compromise any position of advocacy.”

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.