Bruce Lehrmann inquiry head spent 7.5 hours over 55 phone calls to The Australian during probe, court told
The head of the inquiry into the handling of Bruce Lehrmann’s prosecution spent 10 hours on the phone to journalists – including seven-and-a-half hours on the phone to The Australian newspaper – during the probe, a court has been told.
Shane Drumgold, the former ACT director of public prosecutions, is taking legal action against the ACT government and Walter Sofronoff, a former Queensland judge who headed the Lehrmann inquiry, in an effort to quash the ACT board of inquiry’s findings.
At a directions hearing at the ACT supreme court on Wednesday morning, Drumgold’s lawyer, Dan O’Gorman, said he would seek to use fresh phone records showing Sofronoff had made 65 phone calls to journalists between 9 February and 31 July 2023 to show he had a perception of bias.
Sofronoff’s report, which was given to journalists before the ACT’s chief minister, made “several serious findings of misconduct” against Drumgold, saying he “at times … lost objectivity and did not act with fairness and detachment” throughout Lehrmann’s prosecution for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins.
Lehrmann has denied raping Higgins and pleaded not guilty to a charge of sexual intercourse without consent. His criminal trial was abandoned due to juror misconduct and a second trial did not proceed due to prosecutors’ fears for Higgins’ mental health.
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Drumgold’s lawyers argued the inquiry failed to give him a fair hearing, denied him natural justice, breached the law and “gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias”.
The 65 phone calls Sofronoff made spanned nine hours and 57 minutes and 55 of them were made to journalists at The Australian newspaper, O’Gorman said.
Many of the calls were to the columnist Janet Albrechtsen, who
O’Gorman alleged had expressed an “adverse attitude” towards Drumgold over the months during the inquiry.
During the inquiry’s public hearings, which occurred over May and June 2023, O’Gorman said Sofronoff had at least 10 calls with The Australian – eight of them with Albrechtsen in particular.
O’Gorman said emails and text messages between Sofronoff and Albrechtsen have also been submitted as evidence.
Drumgold’s team intends to argue Sofronoff ’s relationship with the columnist showed he held an “apprehension of bias” and his behaviour was not in line with the media rules he put in place. O’Gorman said other media outlets that dealt with the board of inquiry had acted in accordance with Sofronoff’s own rules.
Sofronoff, in his affidavit, argued that it was his job as inquiry chair to speak with journalists, and his communications were above board.
Lawyers for the ACT government and Sofronoff have challenged the admissibility of the phone records and other communications between the inquiry chair and journalists, arguing much of it is not relevant.
Justice Stephen Kaye told the parties the case was not “an inquiry into an inquiry” and would be “strictly” a judicial review on very confined administrative law grounds.
Kaye is yet to rule on whether the phone records and Sofronoff ’s other communications with journalists will be admissible. O’Gorman was ordered to submit further arguments by next Monday before a decision is made.
The case will return on 13 February when the hearings begin.