Category Archives: Defamation law (Australia)

Australia news live: Wong ‘deeply concerned’ about escalation in Middle East; RBA interest rate decision due today

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Reserve bank’s two-day August meeting likely to leave key interest rate unchanged for a sixth straight gathering. Follow the day’s news live

Australia will join the US Global Entry program in 2025, creating an easier pathway for the hundreds of thousands of Australians who visit the country each year.

Eligible Australians who sign up for the program would benefit from streamlined and expedited immigration and customs clearance channels on arrival into the US, a statement from the foreign minister, Penny Wong, says.

Joining the Global Entry program is a mark of the closeness and the strength of the relationship between our two countries.

The foundation of the friendship between Australia and United States is the friendship between our people. This program will deepen these links and make it easier to foster greater commercial ties.

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Linda Reynolds tells defamation trial why Brittany Higgins meeting was held in room where staffer was allegedly raped

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Western Australian senator is suing Brittany Higgins over social media posts she alleges damaged her reputation

Linda Reynolds says she chose to meet with Brittany Higgins in the room her former staffer had allegedly been raped in a few days earlier because it was the only private space available in her ministerial office suite, a court has heard.

The Western Australian senator said she also was not aware of a potential sexual assault allegation at the time, and didn’t notice any “vibes” or “glances” from Higgins, who she acknowledged was “very upset”.

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Brittany Higgins and husband schemed to ‘ambush’ Linda Reynolds, Liberal senator’s lawyer tells defamation trial

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Reynolds is suing former staffer over social media posts she alleges damaged her reputation

Linda Reynolds’ lawyer has told a court “every fairytale needs a villain” and has claimed Brittany Higgins and her husband schemed to ambush the Western Australian senator as part of a sophisticated media plan.

Reynolds is suing Higgins in the Western Australia supreme court over social media posts she alleges damaged her reputation, marking the latest in a series of legal battles related to Higgins’ rape in Parliament House five years ago.

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Linda Reynolds’ lawyers pore over Brittany Higgins phone download ahead of defamation trial

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Team working through documents including more than 56,000 pages of information Australian federal police downloaded from Higgins’ phone

Lawyers for Liberal senator Linda Reynolds are poring over tens of thousands of pages of potential evidence taken from Brittany Higgins’ phone.

The former defence minister, who plans to retire from politics at the next election, is suing her former political staffer over a series of social media posts she says damaged her reputation.

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Union’s response to allegations ‘falls short’, minister says – as it happened

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This blog is now closed.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers has warned about what he calls the “normalisation of extremism” in politics in the wake of the attempted assassination of former United States president Donald Trump at the weekend.

In a round of television and radio interviews this morning to spruik the tax cuts now being delivered in Australians’ tax returns, Chalmers also spoke about the Trump rally in Pennsylvania that injured the former president and left one attendee dead and two others critically injured before the alleged shooter was shot and killed.

We need to be able to disagree in a peaceful way.

We can’t let extremism and polarisation and violence be the norm in our politics. Democracies are supposed to help mend and moderate our differences, not magnify and horrify them. And unfortunately, what we’re seeing with what feels like increasing regularity, is the ugliness and the polarisation and extremism in politics.

There is a role obviously for peaceful protests and looking for consensus in our country doesn’t always mean looking for unanimity – there will always be a range of views. But I think if you look around the world and you look around the democratic world, then you can see that politics is getting uglier, more violent, more polarised in extreme ways, and these are very troubling developments.

We’ve got a big choice to make as democratic societies, we’ve got an opportunity here to step back from the normalisation of that violence, to make sure that we disagree in civil ways and not in violent ways, and that we settle our difference with votes not violence.

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Bruce Lehrmann claims judge denied him ‘fairness’ in defamation loss as he launches appeal

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Former political staffer listed no legal firm as acting for him in his notice of appeal lodged on Friday

Bruce Lehrmann claims that he was denied procedural fairness by the judge who rejected his defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.

Lehrmann’s notice of appeal against the April judgment, which found that on the balance of probabilities he raped Brittany Higgins on a minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019, was lodged at the federal court on Friday.

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Denial of procedural fairness by the trial judge.

The justification finding was contrary to the evidence and the application of the standard of proof required by trial judge.

Construction/misconstruction of the imputations by the trial judge.

Inadequate award of damages where aggravation was made out by the applicant.

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Bruce Lehrmann granted extension to consider appeal of defamation ruling in Network Ten case

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Justice Michael Lee labels Ten lawyer’s comments outside court following judgment ‘discourteous’ and ‘misleading’

Bruce Lehrmann has been granted an extension of time to consider an appeal at a federal court hearing which saw Network Ten’s conduct outside the court, after the judgment, described by Justice Michael Lee as “discourteous” and “misleading”.

Lee said Ten’s decision to offer comment outside his court minutes after the judgment was handed down had caused him concern, in particular the claim the network had been vindicated.

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Bruce Lehrmann to pay Peter FitzSimons thousands in legal costs

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Lehrmann will pay the columnist $4,616 to cover cost of producing documents during failed defamation case against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson

Bruce Lehrmann has agreed to pay the columnist and author Peter FitzSimons’ costs for complying with a subpoena during Lehrmann’s failed defamation proceedings against Network Ten and former Project presenter Lisa Wilkinson.

Lehrmann lost his defamation case against Network Ten and Wilkinson in the federal court earlier this month. Justice Michael Lee found on the balance of probabilities that Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins on a minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019. Lehrmann has consistently denied the allegation and pleaded not guilty at the criminal trial into the matter which was aborted due to juror misconduct.

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Bruce Lehrmann should pay Ten’s entire legal bill after ‘deliberately wicked’ decision to sue, network says

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In court submissions, Ten’s lawyers argue Lehrmann should indemnify the network for its legal costs, estimated at $8m

Bruce Lehrmann should pay all Network Ten’s legal costs because suing The Project for defamation was “deliberately wicked and calculated” and an abuse of process, Ten has told the federal court.

The former Liberal staffer lost the defamation case he brought against Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, with Justice Michael Lee finding that on the balance of probabilities Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins on a minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019.

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Linda Reynolds welcomes Brittany Higgins’ ‘olive branch’ but says without concessions she will go to trial

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Reynolds says if ‘Higgins does not accept Justice Lee’s findings on the claims of coverup and mistreatment … it will have to be proved again in our trial’

Linda Reynolds has welcomed Brittany Higgins’ “olive branch” apology but insists she will take her former staffer to court in July unless she accepts a federal court’s finding the Liberal senator did not cover up and mistreat her.

In a statement on Saturday, Higgins apologised to Reynolds, the former defence minister and her one-time boss, along with her then chief of staff Fiona Brown, after Justice Lee’s judgment last Monday rejected Higgins’s claims of a political cover-up.

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Brittany Higgins hopes Bruce Lehrmann rape finding sets ‘new precedent’ for sexual assault survivors

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In her first statement since a judge dismissed Lehrmann’s defamation action, Higgins also takes swipe at Seven’s Spotlight program

Brittany Higgins says she hopes Justice Michael Lee’s judgment in Bruce Lehrmann’s failed defamation case will set a new precedent for how courts consider the testimonies of victims of sexual assault.

In a statement on Saturday, Higgins also said she was “devastated a rapist was given a nationwide platform to maintain his lies about what happened”. She hoped people who contributed to Channel Seven’s Spotlight program last June, in which Lehrmann was interviewed, “will reflect on their decision”.

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How Justice Michael Lee untangled the Higgins-Lehrmann ‘omnishambles’

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It was a masterclass in dispassionate legal dissection with lessons for future defamation and sexual assault prosecutions, and for media practice

In determining that Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins, federal court justice Michael Lee took a giant knot of allegations, with all its loops and loose ends, and meticulously and painstakingly unpicked it.

That he did it with such acerbic clarity makes an already unusual judgment only more so.

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Parliament rape claim was true, judge rules in case that gripped Australia

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Defamation trial judge satisfied, on balance of probabilities, that Bruce Lehrmann raped colleague Brittany Higgins in 2019

For years, the Australian public has been fascinated by a rape allegation in Parliament House that embroiled government ministers, media personalities and political staff in multiple complicated legal and civil battles.

The saga reached a climax on Monday when Justice Michael Lee declared he was satisfied, on the balance of probabilities, that Bruce Lehrmann raped his then colleague Brittany Higgins in 2019.

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Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial live updates: verdict an ‘unmitigated disaster’ for Lehrmann, Ten lawyer says; Wilkinson says she ‘published a true story about rape’

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Justice Lee finds Ten’s defence of truth successful after Lehrmann sued the network and journalist Lisa Wilkinson in the federal court of Australia for defamation. Follow the latest news and updates from the judgment today

Bruce Lehrmann and Lisa Wilkinson have both arrived into courtroom one on the 21st level of the federal court building in central Sydney.

Lehrmann is sitting at the bench, alongside his legal team, while Wilkinson is sitting on the other side of the courtroom in the front row of the gallery, in a row of red reserved seats.

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Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn leaves Seven

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Llewellyn confirmed his resignation which comes after Lehrmann defamation trial heard about tactics allegedly used to secure interview, claims he and the network deny

Spotlight executive producer Mark Llewellyn has confirmed his resignation from Channel Seven, which comes after allegations made during a defamation trial that the network reimbursed Bruce Lehrmann for money spent on cocaine and sex workers.

Both Seven and Llewllyn have denied those allegations.

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Bruce Lehrmann raped Brittany Higgins in Parliament House, judge finds on balance of probabilities

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Justice Michael Lee finds former Liberal staffer was not defamed by Lisa Wilkinson and Ten in interview with Brittany Higgins in February 2021

Bruce Lehrmann has lost his defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, bringing to an end a sprawling legal saga which has gripped the nation.

In a live oral summary that took two and a half hours, Justice Michael Lee said the former Liberal staffer was not defamed by Wilkinson and Ten when The Project broadcast an interview with Brittany Higgins on Monday 15 February 2021 in which she alleged she was raped in Parliament House.

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Brittany Higgins questions whether she was drugged on night of alleged rape in new court submission

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Higgins says any question about her evidence in the Bruce Lehrmann defamation case should take into account her trauma and the possibility she may have been drugged

Brittany Higgins has told the federal court the suggestion by an AFP officer that she might have been drugged on the night she was allegedly raped should have been raised in the defamation trial.

Higgins filed a seven-page submission to the court on Tuesday after being invited by Justice Michael Lee last week to make final submissions concerning her credit before the judgment in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson is handed down on Monday.

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Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial: judge to hand down verdict on Monday

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Federal court announces a new date for the decision after original date delayed by fresh evidence

Justice Michael Lee will deliver his judgment in the defamation case Bruce Lehrmann brought against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson in the federal court in Sydney on Monday.

The federal court announced the date for the decision on Tuesday, more than three months after the five-week trial ended on 22 December and four days after the final hearing of additional evidence last week.

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‘I’ve got the yarn’: Taylor Auerbach cautioned over spending as he courted Bruce Lehrmann, texts reveal

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Fellow Spotlight producer told Auerbach he found it ‘bizarre’ he was taking Lehrmann to dinner every night

Spotlight producers warned Taylor Auerbach about dropping too much money on Seven’s company card while he courted Bruce Lehrmann over several months for an exclusive interview, text messages have revealed.

The text messages between the former Seven producer and his senior colleagues were tendered in federal court after the Lehrmann defamation trial was reopened for Auerbach to give additional evidence as part of Channel Ten’s defence.

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Australia weather live updates: more heavy rain forecast for NSW and Qld as SES issues flood warnings; Sydney downpours cause train delays and airport flight cancellations

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Dozens of flights cancelled at Sydney airport and drivers told to avoid non-essential travel as inland low and coastal trough combine

Helen Reid from the Bureau of Meteorology has just provided us with an update on the Sydney rain and said the city could very well receive a month’s worth of rain in one day.

She pointed to the Observatory Hill gauge and said on average in April, there is around 126.5mm of rainfall during the month. Since 9am yesterday morning, there has been 106mm of rain.

We are expecting rainfall over Sydney to increase during today … I would suggest that if we got more than the April average, that wouldn’t be too beyond too far beyond this stretch of imagination.

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