The barrister for Network Ten took Bruce Lehrmann by the hand and led him into the weeds, and the further they ventured, the more that the former Liberal staffer’s brain began to freeze.
First there were the different accounts he gave about the reason he returned to Parliament House on the night he is alleged to have raped his then colleague Brittany Higgins in March 2019.
He told his chief-of-staff Fiona Brown when she quizzed him about it a few days afterwards that he had returned to his office to drink whisky. He told the police two years later that he had gone back to do some work. He told Channel Seven’s Spotlight program that the police version was true.
CCTV showing Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins at a bar in Canberra on March 22, 2019.Credit: Spotlight, Channel Seven
He told the court in which he is currently suing Network Ten for defamation that he had lied to Brown about the whisky because she had recently admonished him for a separate security breach, and he believed she would have taken less kindly to him returning to the office to work than going in to access his alcohol.
“But why?” Ten’s barrister Matthew Collins KC asked Lehrmann.
“If I had said I’d accessed documents at that time, Fiona Brown would have taken the view that was very serious,” he said. “I was not prepared to take that risk.”
Higgins’ account of that evening has been relentlessly scrutinised, in media interviews, speeches and Lehrmann’s aborted criminal trial. She claims that Lehrmann raped her on the couch in the office of their boss, Senator Linda Reynolds. Lehrmann has launched defamation proceedings against Network Ten for airing the claims, as well as journalist Lisa Wilkinson, who sported a Kermit-green suit to watch day three of the proceedings.
Journalist Lisa Wilkinson left the Federal Court on Friday flanked by her barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, and Ten’s barrister Matthew Collins.Credit: James Brickwood
But this has exposed him to rigorous public scrutiny for the first time. He adopted the approach taken by most defendants at his criminal trial and chose not to give evidence, so his version of events has only been aired in a limited way: the pieces of his police interview that were pulled out for the jury at his criminal trial, and an interview on Seven’s Spotlight program.
The questioning that made Bruce Lehrmann’s brain freeze
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24.11.2023
The barrister for Network Ten took Bruce Lehrmann by the hand and led him into the weeds, and the further they ventured, the more that the former Liberal staffer’s brain began to freeze.
First there were the different accounts he gave about the reason he returned to Parliament House on the night he is alleged to have raped his then colleague Brittany Higgins in March 2019.
He told his chief-of-staff Fiona Brown when she quizzed him about it a few days afterwards that he had returned to his office to drink whisky. He told the police two years later that he had gone back to do........
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