Lisa Wilkinson has lodged an official complaint with the Seven Network about a program that featured an interview with Bruce Lehrmann and about a separate segment on morning television.
Wilkinson lodged the complaint on Tuesday alleging the broadcasts breached commercial television standards, and can escalate the complaint to the Australian Communications and Media Authority (Acma) if it is not resolved, her lawyers confirmed.
The complaint relates to the Spotlight program shown on 4 June featuring an interview with Lehrmann, and a segment on Sunrise two days later which referred to a letter allegedly sent to Wilkinson by Brittany Higgins.
The contents of the complaint are unclear, but lawyers for Network Ten, Wilkinson and Higgins, who alleges she was raped by Lehrmann, have raised serious concerns that Seven appeared to have improperly used evidence from Lehrmann’s trial in the Spotlight program.
The lawyers have raised these concerns with the network, the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, the ACT supreme court and the Australian federal police, court documents show.
The AFP are considering a complaint lodged by Ten last week, but the ACT supreme court confirmed on Wednesday that no application had been made regarding the concerns.
Lawyers for Network Ten and Wilkinson made explosive allegations in the federal court last week that a “calculated” and “concerted” media campaign using restricted court material was being waged to pressure and dissuade witnesses from giving evidence in the defamation trial brought by Lehrmann.
Lehrmann is suing Ten and Wilkinson over their initial reporting of Higgins’s rape allegation, which he denies. The rape trial was aborted due to juror misconduct and a second trial was abandoned due to concerns about the risk it posed to Higgins’s life.
Lehrmann has also commenced defamation proceedings against the ABC for broadcasting a live address by Higgins to the National Press Club.
A complaint to Acma is mentioned in the 307-page federal court affidavit filed by Marlia Saunders, a lawyer representing Network Ten. It is one of several developments outlined in the affidavit, which was filed as part of the defamation case Lehrmann is pursuing against Ten, its journalist Wilkinson, and the ABC.
According to an email sent by lawyers for Wilkinson to Spotlight’s executive producer Mark Llewellyn on 8 June, which is included in the Saunders affidavit, they had viewed a document described as Ten’s Acma complaint, agreed with it and endorsed it, and “will be making a separate complaint on behalf of Ms Wilkinson and Mr [Peter] Fitzsimons”.
It is understood Ten’s complaint is yet to be lodged.
Separately, the Ten affidavit also reveals that lawyers representing Ten, Wilkinson and Brittany Higgins believe the extent of evidence leaked from Lehrmann’s trial is not limited to Higgins’s text messages and audio of a meeting between Higgins, her partner, David Sharaz, Wilkinson and another Ten journalist.
In that audio, Wilkinson appeared to mock the Coalition by raising questions regarding the validity of Senator Jacinta Price’s preselection to the National party and struggling to pronounce her name.
According to the affidavit, lawyers representing Ten, Higgins and Wilkinson have claimed that other leaked material includes unseen footage from Network Ten, a draft of Higgins’s book manuscript, audio recordings of interviews between the AFP and witnesses, an audio recording of two security guards at Parliament House on the night of the alleged rape, a statutory declaration signed by Higgins and extracts from Higgins’s personal diary.
The affidavit also shows that lawyers for Wilkinson believe the Seven Network reported a “leaked” text from Wilkinson’s husband, Peter FitzSimons, to Higgins which was “falsified” and “does not exist”, and that Wilkinson says she has no record of an “angry” letter that the Australian reported she was sent by Higgins. This is also the letter reported on by Sunrise, lawyers for Wilkinson say.
Seven declined to comment. The Australian did not respond to a request for comment.
The only response from either media outlet contained in the Saunders affidavit is from Justine Munsie, a lawyer acting for Seven, who wrote to Saunders on 8 June.
Saunders had asked the previous day about whether an audio recording of the meeting between Higgins, Wilkinson and others, as well as the “rough cut” of footage from the interview Wilkinson did with Higgins for The Project – both of which had featured on Spotlight – were taken from evidence provided to the supreme court.
Munsie responded: “We are instructed that as far as our client is aware, the material referred to in your letter did not come into its possession in breach of the implied undertaking.”
Lawyers for Lehrmann have denied he is the source of the leaked material, both in the federal court and in multiple emails in the Ten affidavit.
The affidavit also contains an email that the ACT acting DPP, Anthony Williamson SC, sent to Saunders on 6 June. In it, Williamson says that while it appeared evidence provided under subpoena had being used improperly, the source of the leak was unclear.
He said that while he understood that Network Ten would “feel justifiably aggrieved about this apparent breach”, it “is not clear to me on the available information … who exactly breached the undertaking, and the circumstances surrounding that breach”.
“One reasonably available inference is that Mr Lehrmann provided the material to Channel 7 in breach of the undertaking,” Williamson wrote.
“But that, of course, [is] not the only reasonably available inference. It also remains reasonably possible that any number of other people who had access to the documents could have breached it.
“What is also unclear is the ‘knowledge’ of Channel 7 surrounding the provenance of the documents.”
Justice Michael Lee, who is presiding over the defamation case, last week rejected an application by lawyers for Ten and Wilkinson to question Lehrmann over the alleged breach, and suggested concerns about the leaks were better heard by the ACT supreme court through contempt of court proceedings.
The defamation case is set to return to the federal court on 7 July.
