David Leyonhjelm has told a court he cannot remember exactly what the Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said during a heated debate in parliament in June last year but that he has “never wavered in my view as to their meaning”.
The former Liberal Democrat senator took the witness stand on Thursday in the defamation case brought against him by Hanson-Young.
Leyonhjelm told the court what his “best recollection” was of an interjection made by Hanson-Young during a Senate debate on 28 June about women’s safety.
“I’ve had many opportunities to think through that since the 28th of June [and] my best recollection is that it began with the words women, and there was something in the middle, and it ended with ‘if men didn’t rape them’,” he said.
Under cross-examination by the barrister Sue Chrysanthou, Leyonhjelm said he could not say with confidence what he had heard Hanson-Young say. “I think I made that plain in my affidavit and in my interviews that I don’t recall [the] exact words but that the meaning was clear,” he said.
“I think I’ve said that multiple times, I’ve not varied in that position. It was, as far as I’m concerned, quite clear what the meaning was but the precise words is the only bit I haven’t been confident of and, even today, I’m still not confident that I know the precise full sentence.”
The Greens senator is suing Leyonhjelm over interviews he gave between 28 June and 2 July to Sky News, the Melbourne radio station 3AW and the ABC’s 7.30 program, and a media statement posted on 28 June after the Senate exchange.
Hanson-Young claims he defamed her because the comments made her out to be a hypocrite and misandrist.
In one of the interviews, played in court on Monday, Leyonhjelm accused Hanson-Young of saying “words to the effect of men should stop raping women, the implication being all men are rapists”.
The feud in the Senate began after a debate about women’s safety following the rape and murder of the Melbourne comedian Eurydice Dixon, in which Leyonhjelm told Hanson-Young to “stop shagging men”.
Leyonhjelm said he had made the comments in response to an alleged claim by Hanson-Young in that debate that “all men are rapists” – a claim she denies.
On Thursday Chrysanthou put to Leyonhjelm that Hanson-Young had never said that “all men are rapists”.
“I’ve not said she did,” he replied.
“[And] she didn’t say anything [that was ] tantamount to all men are rapists?” Chrysanthou continued.
“I believe she did,” he responded.
During a testy cross-examination on Thursday Leyonhjelm denied Chrysanthou’s suggestion that his comments about Hanson-Young – including telling the Greens senator to “continue shagging men as she pleases” – constituted a “sexist slur”.
“If you, in the course of your job as a senator, say or infer that men are collectively responsible for rape and you nonetheless have sex with them, one is sufficient, that’s hypocrisy,” he said. “I was calling out hypocrisy.”
“You would never ever have said such a thing about a man,” Chrysanthou said.
“I could envisage a situation where I could have said it about a man,” he replied.
But when asked if it would be a “reasonable interpretation” to suggest Hanson-Young was claiming “every single man” was a rapist, Leyonhjelm admitted it would not.
Chrysanthou pushed Leyonhjelm on whether he made any effort to confirm his belief about what Hanson-Young said during the debate before he gave the interviews and put out the media statement.
He said he had asked the Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi and One Nation’s Peter Georgiou on the afternoon of 28 June, but not other Greens senators or Hanson-Young herself.
“I asked people who were politically closer to me,” he said. “It would have been easy [to ask Hanson-Young], I suppose you are right [but] as I said earlier there was no doubt in my mind about what she had said.”
