Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyers have argued on the final day of his high-profile defamation trial that Brittany Higgins told “complete falsehoods” and her allegations were part of a “political hit job” fuelled by her partner.
Justice Michael Lee on Friday concluded the case and reserved his decision after more than four weeks of evidence and submissions.
On Friday Lee heard final arguments from Steven Whybrow SC and Matthew Richardson SC, both counsel for Lehrmann.
Whybrow told the court that Higgins had no hesitation about telling mistruths and obfuscating, including by deleting material from her phone, falsely alleging she was pressured into staying silent, telling a mistruth about her handling of the white dress she was wearing on the night of the alleged rape, and making a false claim about having a panic attack in a Parliament House bathroom.
“We say, fundamentally, Ms Higgins is not a person whose evidence can be relied on at all,” he told the court. “She’s not a reliable historian.
“But more significantly, she has demonstrated herself to be repeatedly and in various forums over a significant period of time less than frank or honest in giving evidence.
“Whenever she has faced a situation where she has some legal or moral or ethical obligation to tell the truth, she has demonstrated that she has no qualms whatsoever in obfuscating: asserting matters she does not know one way or the other is fact whether they are true or not, but mostly telling complete falsehoods.”
Whybrow said Higgins’ interview with Network Ten and The Project had unleashed a “virus of madness that spread amongst everybody, from politicians to journalists where sub judice just went out the window and where the rights of the individual ceased to exist”.
He also suggested that Higgins’ allegations were part of a political hit job fuelled by her partner, David Sharaz.
There was no cogent evidence supporting the notion there was consensual sex or a sexual assault, he said.
Whybrow posited an alternative theory that Higgins had feared for her job as a Liberal party staffer after being found naked in the minister Linda Reynolds’ office and had invented the allegation, something the media defendants say does not accord with the evidence.
He also suggested that she may have woken up naked in Reynolds’ office because she had undressed in anticipation of Lehrmann potentially coming into the room for consensual sex, which did not eventuate.
Lehrmann’s evidence is that he left parliament without checking on his colleague or seeing her again after completing his work in a nearby room in Reynolds’ ministerial suite.
Lee suggested that was a “strange sort of thing” to do.
“I mean, let’s assume for the moment that Mr Lehmann’s evidence is accepted,” Lee said. “And what happens is that you have the parting of the paths when you go into the suite and he takes out his pen and he works on the question time briefs.
“From general experience, if you had been with a single woman all night, and gone back to Parliament House, and she’d gone off somewhere, it’s a strange sort of thing just to leave her on her Pat Malone and not worry about how she might get home and just sort of wander off into the night.
“At the very best it’s a bit caddish.”
The court previously heard that Lehrmann gad missed a series of phone calls from his girlfriend that night, including when he was in Reynolds’ office suite, and he had not returned them.
He gave evidence that he had put his phone on silent and had it face down while he finished work at his desk.
Whybrow said it was reasonable, given the hour, that he wouldn’t have called his partner back when he picked up his phone to order an Uber home.
“It is not necessarily the case that you’re going to ring up somebody at 2.30 in the morning,” Whybrow said. “You are probably already moving towards the doghouse at that stage anyway, by just being out so late and not answering the phone.”
Richardson, whose submissions focused on the actions of Network Ten and Wilkinson, said his client was clearly identifiable by virtue of the identifying details contained in The Project episode.
He said the media defendants had not provided Lehrmann with a reasonable opportunity to respond, given that they had submitted questions on a Friday afternoon with a Monday morning deadline.
Richardson was also critical of Wilkinson’s submissions to the trial that she had not had much to do with the preparation of what was eventually broadcast, particularly during the latter stages.
“She stood on a stage and accepted a Logie award for the program and now we see her instructing a counsellor to say, ‘Well, I didn’t really have that much to do with the program, particularly near the end,’” Richardson said.
Lee asked Richardson whether he conceded that a finding of abuse of process could be made against Lehrmann, should the court find that consensual sex had occurred, given that Lehrmann’s evidence and case relied on an argument that no sex took place.
Richardson agreed such a finding was open but said his client should be awarded damages for being defamed as a rapist regardless.
In reply, counsel for Lisa Wilkinson, Sue Chrysanthou SC, said the suggestion made by Whybrow that Higgins had been sexually interested in Lehrmann on the night of the alleged rape was contradictory to Lehrmann’s own evidence.
Lehrmann had told the court the pair had only minimal and professional interactions that night.
“It may well be that Mr Lehrmann was so shy and retiring that he didn’t see these apparent obvious signs of interest from Ms Higgins that evening,” Chrysanthou said.
“It may well be that he had no idea when they entered the suite – one of the theories is that Ms Higgins was so interested in him she went and took her clothes off and was waiting for him – and he didn’t realise.
“That is a highly unusual situation, one would think, in relation to two 23-year-olds. Maybe it’s how 60-year-old married couples behave but not two 23-year-olds.”
Lee will hand down his decision at a later date.
Lehrmann has denied the allegation that he raped Higgins. His criminal trial was aborted due to juror misconduct and a planned retrial was called off due to concerns about Higgins’ mental health.
