Living loving Lehrmann One of the few subjects where Crikey has traditionally found itself in furious agreement with the rest of Australia’s media is the need for defamation reform. Yet we may be revising that view. If we want to lower the number of defamation cases faced by Australian media companies, maybe it’s less that we need defamation reform and more that we need more cases to run.
Could anything give a potential complainant more reason to pause before calling their lawyer than the recent experience of Bruce Lehrmann? The former Liberal staffer is suing Ten Network and Lisa Wilkinson for defamation over their reporting of Brittany Higgins’ initial claim that she was raped by Lehrmann at Parliament House. Lehrmann was not identified at the time, and denies the allegations. He previously settled similar cases with News Corp and the ABC.
As part of his claim that his reputation has been destroyed, he’s been forced to concede in court that he has lied to his employer (over his whereabouts in early April), to the police (about the presence of alcohol in his office) and to an oddly credulous Liam Bartlett on Channel 7’s Spotlight (about his reason for lying to Fiona Brown, chief of staff of then-defence minister Linda Reynolds). He also admitted that he has been relying on that network to pay his rent for the past year. Separate but related is whatever this is:
And while the revelations are of an entirely different magnitude, as Lehrmann was interrogated about his texts to friends about needing “bags” and wanting to “get lit”, it did call to mind the years we spent having to remind ourselves, when wondering “who unleashed the torrent of obloquy and calumny against Ben Roberts-Smith?”, that it was BRS himself.
Post-mortem Speaking of blights on the public square, we’ve come across yet more evidence of cutesy posting from arms of state. Behold this exhausting desperation from the Australian Federal Police, who took time out from being a reliable calamity to frantically google every single piece of yoof slang its surveillance yields, to vomit the following on to Instagram:
We’ve spared you the entirety of the post, but it doesn’t get any less assaultively, relentlessly embarrassing, nor does its putative self-awareness ease the pain.
While we’re on the subject, here’s what we would class as “cheugy“: passing on an alleged rape victim’s sensitive counselling notes to her alleged rapist’s lawyers. Raiding the homes of journalists who’ve embarrassed the government isn’t very slay, as far as we can see. A more thorough investigation of who leaked classified information that helped the government argue against the medevac bill — which allowed asylum seekers to get medical treatment in Australia — would have been seriously extra. And so on.
Age of the Hun It’s always worth double-checking when capturing something off social media. So it was that the Herald Sun’s “staff writers” ripped a tweet by Crikey‘s Cam Wilson in which he’d transcribed an internal note sent to staff at Nine newspapers on behalf of leadership, concerning journalists who signed a letter calling out Australian outlets’ coverage of the conflict in Israel and the occupied territories:
The Hun‘s staff writers thought they’d spotted an interesting detail, pointing out that the note apparently misspelled Age editor Patrick Elligett’s name as “Elliot”. But it hadn’t: that was a transcription error in Cam’s note.
As mad as a Katter When it comes to stunts, Kennedy MP Bob Katter is a victim of his success. How in this day and age are we to get excited about his typically eccentric presser announcing that he has redesigned Australian coins to have either a war veteran or an Indigenous warrior’s face instead of King Charles?
This is a man who had dressed as the grim reaper to reflect Australia’s dying car industry; ziplined over giant crocodiles (sort of) for tourism; made a movie were he straight up murdered his electoral opponents; popped his shirt off to stand up to greenies (or something); and pixelated the image of two men in an attack ad lest they try to marry one another. And that’s just the stuff he does on purpose — nothing will ever be as lyrically, arrestingly strange as his slightly moderated view on marriage equality a few years later:
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