Porter tilt ‘matter of principle’

CHRISTIAN Porter’s appeal against his barrister being barred from acting in his sincesettled defamation case against the ABC is a matter of principle, a court has heard.

The former attorney-general sued the national broadcaster for defamation over a story alleging an unnamed senior minister had been accused of raping a woman in 1988 when he was a teenager.

Following public speculation, the MP publicly outed himself as the accused minister, denying the allegation. No charges have ever been laid.

The woman who alleged Mr Porter had raped her, known as Kate, died by suicide in mid-2020.

Mr Porter briefed defamation barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC in his case against the ABC, but she was restrained from acting for him in a spinoff legal dispute brought by Joanne Dyer, a friend of Kate’s.

Ms Dyer argued she had given Ms Chrysanthou confidential information related to Kate in a legal discussion in November 2020, and Justice Tom Thawley ruled there was a risk of that information being used, even inadvertently, in the ABC defamation case.

Mr Porter is now appealing that decision, with a hearing expected in February 2022.

Justice John Middleton on Friday asked Mr Porter’s barrister Callan O’Neill if the appeal was “a fight about costs”.

Mr O’Neill said that was one way of looking at it but it was also “a matter of principle”.