Bruce Lehrmann, Brittany Higgins and the justice system

Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. This week, Bruce Lehrmann gave his first media interview after the trial over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins was abandoned last year. In it, Mr. Lehrmann, who’s never been found guilty of any wrongdoing, maintained his innocence, saying the alleged assault simply didn’t happen. It came as an inquiry into the justice system’s handling of the case heard its final evidence. Today we speak to ABC court reporter Elizabeth Byrne, who’s covered the story from the start. Liz, we’re going to unpack what’s happening in this story involving Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins and where this is all up to. But let’s look first at this appearance by Bruce Lehrmann on Channel Seven’s Spotlight this week. What was he saying?

Elizabeth Byrne: Well, this was the first time probably a lot of people had seen him speak. He has done an interview with a newspaper before this. But this was his opportunity to, you know, appear and tell people his side of the story.

Bruce Lehrmann: I don’t want to be known as the guy who could have would have allegedly raped Brittany Higgins. And that’s and that’s that’s a tag that’s out there now. And I don’t have the court system to remove that tag anymore.

Elizabeth Byrne: It did give Bruce Lehrmann a bit of an opportunity to put things in his own words because he never gave evidence during the actual trial.

Liam Bartlett: Did you rape Brittany Higgins?

Bruce Lehrmann: No, I didn’t. It simply didn’t happen.

Sam Hawley: Yeah. Okay. And he also in that interview, Liz, he vented his frustrations at the Act chief prosecutor Shane Drumgold.

Bruce Lehrmann: He took my opportunity for a not guilty verdict away from me. But he then. But he then told Australia, Oh, I still could have won it.

Sam Hawley: So I want to talk to you about Shane Drumgold in more detail in a moment. But remind me, how did we get to this point? Because it’s a case that’s been going on for a very long time in 2021, News.com and The Project on Channel Ten, they published these sort of bombshell allegations of rape.

Daniel Boucher: Tonight, former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins accuses the prime Minister of victim blaming rhetoric in the wake of her rape allegations.

Brittany Higgins: I don’t think anyone else should go through what I went through.

Elizabeth Byrne: She did the interviews first and then she did a sit down formal interview with police after that. This attracted incredible public interest.

Andrew Probyn: An explosive allegation that throws the spotlight once again on the culture inside Parliament House.

Elizabeth Byrne: And that’s because it allegedly happened inside Parliament House. And it coincided with a huge debate about the so-called Canberra bubble and allegations of bad behaviour and inappropriate attitudes towards women in that context. Why do we want justice?

Sam Hawley: And we saw all these rallies outside Parliament House March for Justice rallies and Brittany Higgins had spoken at some of those.

Brittany Higgins: You’re all here today not because we want to be here, but because we have to be here. The system is broken.

Elizabeth Byrne: Now, Brittany Higgins had only made an allegation at this point. The Prime Minister later apologised to her.

Scott Morrison, former prime minister: I said yesterday in the Parliament that we had to listen to Brittany. I have listened to Britney. Jenny and I spoke last night. Jenny has a way of clarifying things. Always has.

Elizabeth Byrne: So it did become intensely political. And then by about August, Bruce Lehrmann had been summonsed to appear in court. And that formally happened, I think, in September. And eventually we got through to a trial being run.

Sam Hawley: And Liz, the trial, after much evidence, it’s declared a mistrial, isn’t it?

News anchor: Tonight, the jury in the Bruce Lehman rape trial dramatically dismissed after a juror admits to misconduct.

Elizabeth Byrne: Yes, one of the sheriffs were tidying up the jury room and there was a see through folder and she could see through the front of it the heading of a paper about some research someone had been doing that wasn’t about things that had been included in the trial. The judge had warned the jury, at least 17 times, Do not do your own research. The next day, a mistrial was declared and that was the end of the trial.

Sam Hawley: So the DPP then decides to actually drop the case over concerns for Ms. Higgins mental health. And you would have thought, Liz, that was the end of it. But it isn’t because of course now we have this inquiry.

Elizabeth Byrne: That’s right. And the inquiry was actually sparked by the DPP’s Shane Drumgold.

Juanita Phillips: An inquiry has begun into the prosecution of former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins.

Elizabeth Byrne: And it came out of a letter that he sent to police before the retrial was abandoned. And in that letter he raises concerns about police pressuring him not to pursue the charge against Bruce Lehrmann.

Shane Drumgold, ACT Director of Public Prosecutions: I saw all of these things. My state of mind was that I was suspicious that there may be some political interference, that this might point to it.

Elizabeth Byrne: He said that he thought police wanted the prosecution to fail, and he said he’d been pressured over about a year and a half.

Shane Drumgold, ACT Director of Public Prosecutions: Some of the questions in my mind, hypothetically, were, was this was this at the time a government minister exerting pressure through the federal commissioner onto Act policing to make a matter go away?

Elizabeth Byrne: The inquiry’s been led by Walter Sofronoff, who is a former judge from Queensland. Initially the terms of reference would have been to look at Shane Drumgold’s accusations of pressure on him to not pursue the charge. But those terms of reference were expanded somewhat to include a look at Shane Drumgold’s own activities and whether he had conducted himself within the confines of his commission, basically the rules about his job. So that set the tone for a sort of fairly thorough look at how everybody behaved in the lead up to the prosecution and during the trial.

Sam Hawley: And how did those concerns of Shane Drumgold stack up in this inquiry?

Elizabeth Byrne: For the most part, not very well. To start with, the political interference concerns seemed to go off in a couple of different directions, he said to the inquiry. He was concerned about that. And then some time later he said to the inquiry he was no longer concerned about that because after reading the police statements he realised there wasn’t political interference, that there was rather a skills deficit.

Walter Sofronoff, SC.: Sitting here now having had available to you material that you haven’t seen before. You would acknowledge that your suspicions about the existence of political interference to prevent the case properly going ahead were mistaken.

Shane Drumgold, ACT Director of Public Prosecutions: I do accept that. Thank you. It was the cumulative effect and the unknown behind that. Statements that I’ve read have given me the gnome behind that.

Elizabeth Byrne: But he was deeply concerned that the way that the investigation had unfolded, there was sort of tension between him and the police.

Sam Hawley: And what did police have to say before this inquiry?

Elizabeth Byrne: Well, I think this was quite ironic that the police also seemed to be a bit concerned about politics, but it was a different type of politics. They felt there might be some political pressure to charge Bruce Lehrmann coming from, you know, the MeToo movement influences.

Scott Moller, ACT Police Detective Superintendent: It’s hard for me to articulate the amount of pressure on us to get this done at that time. It’s just a real desire to expedite this process and get Mr. Lehman before the court.

Sam Hawley: All right. And the inquiry findings are meant to be passed to the Act government by July the 31st. So not too far away. You’ve covered the proceedings from the start, Liz, including, of course, the rape trial. What do you think we’ve learnt from this whole saga about the way sexual assault allegations are handled in the courts?

Elizabeth Byrne: The process is never very satisfactory. I mean, I know that anecdotally from my own coverage of these issues, Brittany Higgins chose not to be anonymous. So this unresolved situation is highly public. Bruce Lehrmann has no findings against him, so he’s left in limbo. So it’s not been a good experience for anybody. I think Shane Drumgold summed it up best. He said there are no winners in something like this. There are only losers and losers.

Shane Drumgold, ACT Director of Public Prosecutions: And I’ve got sympathy for everybody involved in this case. Cases like this have no, no winners and no losers. They only have losers and losers.

Sam Hawley: Elizabeth Byrne is a reporter based in Canberra. Bruce Lehrmann is suing Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson for defamation over their initial reporting of the Higgins allegations. He’s also suing the ABC for airing a Press Club address by Brittany Higgins and the former Australian of the Year, Grace Tame. He has settled a defamation case against News Corporation’s New Life Media and national political editor Samantha Maiden. This episode was produced by Veronica Apap, Flint Duxfield, and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is Stephen Smiley. I’m Sam Hawley. You can find all our episodes of the podcast on the ABC Listen app. Thanks for listening.