Television personality Lisa Wilkinson says she was not warned not to give a Logies speech referencing Brittany Higgins during a meeting with the ACT director of public prosecutions, contradicting other evidence given to an inquiry.
In a statement provided to an independent inquiry into the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann, Wilkinson denies she was told that any publicity of the case could be problematic.
Her statement contradicts evidence that the ACT director of public prosecutions, Shane Drumgold SC, provided to the inquiry about a meeting he had with Wilkinson and others on 15 June 2022 to prepare her for the possibility of being a witness in the trial.
According to a note Drumgold made about the meeting, he said Wilkinson told him she was nominated for the Gold Logie for her interview with Higgins, but did not expect to win when the awards were announced days later as the awards were “managed by a rival network”.
Wilkinson had mentioned a planned acceptance speech, according to notes of the meeting, but Drumgold told her “we are not speech editors” and “we have no power to approve or prohibit any public comment”, as that was the role of the court.
But the notes also state that Drumgold told Wilkinson that the defence could apply for a stay in the case if there was any publicity regarding it.
Drumgold on Monday told the inquiry that he felt he had properly conveyed the risk of commenting publicly, even though he could not hear Wilkinson and her lawyer discussing his advice as they muted themselves while doing so.
In her statement, Wilkinson said Drumgold did not tell her that publicity posed a risk to the trial, and said if he had, she would have questioned it, given existing publicity, but would ultimately have followed his advice.
She also said that despite Drumgold’s note of the meeting, she had told him she was nominated for a Logie, not a Gold Logie.
“I specifically raised the issue of the speech with Mr Drumgold because I was concerned to ensure that it did not in any way impact on the trial, and trusted that he would appropriately advise or warn me of any risk that he perceived,” Wilkinson said in the statement.
“The only clear warning I was given was not to mention the trial, and I did not.”
Wilkinson noted that Network Ten, who legally represented her at the time of the meeting but no longer do so, had claimed privilege over its file note regarding the meeting, so she did not have access to it.
Drumgold accepted on Monday that he could have provided a more explicit warning to Wilkinson.
“I would accept that I entirely misread the situation,” he said.
“I thought this was somebody telling me they were up for an award for doing an interview … I was not, to my mind, dealing with the real issue.”
The inquiry heard on Monday that a lawyer for Wilkinson subsequently spoke to Drumgold on multiple occasions about concerns the television personality had over how her Logies speech had been presented in the media, including suggestions she had committed contempt of court and ignored a direct warning from him not to give the speech.
The inquiry heard that after a series of exchanges, including several calls and emails it appeared Drumgold had not responded to, the lawyer sent an email to Drumgold on 6 December 2022 asking when she could speak with him.
Drumgold agreed with counsel assisting the inquiry, Erin Longbottom KC, that it did not appear he had responded, but said it occurred only days after a newspaper report “essentially accused me of misconduct in office” so he “would have been a little bit distracted at that time” because of an inundation of media requests.
Wilkinson’s lawyer sent another email a week later, outlining that Wilkinson felt she had been treated unfairly by Drumgold’s office as he had not “corrected the record” about the meeting and had not publicly confirmed that he would not charge her with contempt regarding the speech.
Drumgold also did not respond to this email, but said he felt the requests in the email were beyond his remit.
“I’m not a publicist. I’m the director of public prosecutions,” he said.
He was again questioned on Wednesday about why he did not agree to the requests of Wilkinson’s lawyer, and said that he felt that if he had done so, “I would have got correctly chastised publicly for that”.
“This was about a trial, it was not about a TV personality’s reputation.”
The inquiry continues.
•This article was amended on 15 May, 2023, to clarify that Lisa Wilkinson was no longer legally represented by Channel Ten.
