Bruce Lehrmann judgment: The political cover-up that never existed
Judge Michael Lee’s judgment makes it abundantly clear that Brittany Higgins’s rape allegations were used to promulgate a non-existent political cover-up – and that Higgins’s partner, David Sharaz, played a central role in weaponising the case against the Morrison government.
Mr Sharaz was a shadowy figure who never appeared in the courtroom but he makes several appearances in Justice Lee’s findings in the defamation case brought by Bruce Lehrmann against the Ten Network and Lisa Wilkinson.
During the trial, Justice Lee more than once queried why Mr Sharaz was not giving evidence in the case, at one point remarking – to much laughter – that he was “like the prophet Elijah … there’s a place for him at the table but he never turns up”.
Justice Lee makes it clear in his ruling that Mr Sharaz’s appearance in the Higgins-Lehrmann saga was the point at which the case jumped from allegations of rape to claims of a political cover-up by the Liberal Party to avoid a scandal in the upcoming federal election.
The Front's Claire Harvey and Legal Affairs Correspondent Ellie Dudley discuss the Bruce Lehrmann defamation…Justice Lee finds that Wilkinson and her team “were prepared to assist in the plans of Mr Sharaz and Ms Higgins to use the allegations for immediate political advantage” and notes “the lack of rigour with which Ms Higgins’s account was examined and questioned during the meeting and thereafter”.
In his judgment, Justice Lee begins his discussion of Mr Sharaz’s involvement under the heading ‘The Development of the Cover-up Narrative’.
That cover-up or “victimisation” allegation was perceived by the Project team as being the most important aspect of its program and its deployment meant the account achieved much notoriety and public interest, Justice Lee observed: “The articulation of the core aspects of this claim commenced shortly before Ms Higgins’s boyfriend, Mr Sharaz, made the necessary arrangements for Ms Higgins to tell her account.”
It was Mr Sharaz who advanced the issue of the bruise on Ms Higgins’s leg – discredited by Justice Lee – as evidence that elevated Ms Higgins’s account from simply being one person’s word against another.
And it was Mr Sharaz to whom Ms Higgins sent audio clips as she was “cleaning out my phone ahead of the police”.
Mr Sharaz clearly had a political motivation, Justice Lee said, pointing to his conversations in a five-hour meeting between Wilkinson, her producer, Angus Llewellyn, and Ms Higgins.
Mr Sharaz announced he and Ms Higgins had chosen the timeline for the story to break because it was a parliamentary sitting week. “I’ve got a friend in Labor, Katy Gallagher on the Labor side, who will probe and continue it going,” he said.
Mr Sharaz took the story to Wilkinson because he felt an “affinity” with her, having briefly done work experience with her on Nine’s Today show. The tone of the interactions between Mr Sharaz and the Ten journalists was set by the first email he sent to Wilkinson in January 2021.
The Front00:0021:20“Mr Sharaz could hardly have chosen a more glaring heading,” Justice Lee noted: “MeToo, Liberal Party, Project Pitch.”
Mr Sharaz got to the point. “I’ve got a sensitive story surrounding a sexual assault at Parliament House; a woman who was pressured by the Liberal Party and female cabinet minister not to pursue it.”
Justice Lee said Mr Sharaz had reinforced “a conspiratorial and political theme” to the story.
Wilkinson had no doubt as to its significance, referring to the “explosive political story” as “an extraordinary cover-up involving Linda Reynolds, Michaelia Cash and the (PM’s office)”.
One email had a “timeline” of Ms Higgins’s allegations sent to journalists selected by Mr Sharaz. Despite Ms Higgins’s claim that the document was hers, Justice Lee found that Mr Sharaz was one of the authors.
His intentions in making and pursuing his “Project Pitch” were manifest, Justice Lee said, not only from his initial assertion that this was a story all about the Liberal Party and a female minister in the context of the “MeToo” movement, but in the light of his expressed intention to liaise with an opposition frontbencher to deploy the allegations against the government in question time.
Llewellyn, the Ten producer, was uninterested in reflecting upon Mr Sharaz’s motives, Justice Lee found: “In light of what had been communicated by Mr Sharaz before and during this first interview, any journalist who did not think (he) had a motivation to inflict immediate political damage would have to be wilfully blind.”
Mr Sharaz was perfectly entitled to work with the opposition on the story “but a journalist acting reasonably would recognise this motivation and scrutinise what was being conveyed cognisant of it.” Insufficient recognition of motive not only failed to increase care taken by Llewellyn and Wilkinson but “they expressed a willingness to assist in the political use of serious charges they were supposedly … assessing with independent minds.”
Brittany Higgins with her partner David Sharaz. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage
Senator Linda Reynolds. Picture: Darren Leigh Roberts
