Bruce Lehrmann makes his case

LEHRMANN: ‘ROME WAS BURNING’

The defamation case launched by former federal Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann against Ten and News Corp ($) over interviews that aired rape allegations made by his former colleague Brittany Higgins on The Project and news.com.au has commenced in Sydney. The Federal Court heard that Lehrmann texted his then girlfriend on the day the Ten Network and News Corp put out the interviews and told her he had legal advice that a criminal trial was “off the cards” and that he was ($) “up for millions” from a potential defamation action. Lehrmann gave evidence in Sydney on Thursday — his first public comments — that he fabricated this claim to calm his girlfriend: “She was incredibly stressed and traumatised. Rome was burning, and I was trying to put on a brave face.”

Lehrmann filed the proceedings last month, alleging the publications — neither of which named him at the time — conveyed a series of defamatory meanings, including that he “raped Brittany Higgins”. In August 2021 Lehrmann was charged with one count of sexual intercourse without consent. The trial was long delayed and eventually abandoned over concerns for Higgins’ mental health. Lehrmann maintains that he is innocent. He named Lisa Wilkinson, who was at Ten’s The Project at the time, and news.com.au political editor Samantha Maiden as respondents.

It’s been reported Wilkinson’s lawyers plan to use the truth defence against Lehrmann, but before that can be interrogated there is the matter of whether Lehrmann can proceed with his claim at all — he did not file the claim within a one-year limitation period for bringing a defamation suit. His barrister has previously told the court it was not reasonable for Lehrmann to file proceedings within the one-year period because of several factors, including legal advice he had received and concerns around Lehrmann’s mental health.

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CREDIT SUISSE WHERE CREDIT’S DUE

Are things starting to all feel a bit global financial crisis-y to anyone else? Silicon Valley Bank collapsed like a neglected souffle last weekend — which ABC business editor Ian Verrender called “the most significant US bank collapse since the meltdown of Lehman Brothers during the global financial crisis”, before helpfully reminding us it came “almost 15 years to the day since the demise of US investment bank Bear Stearns, the forerunner to that terrible turn of events that we now refer to as the GFC”.  And now Credit Suisse has agreed to borrow up to 50 billion Swiss francs (or $81 billion in Australian dollarydoos) from the Swiss National Bank in response to what The Australian Financial Review ($) calls “fears of instability in the global financial system”. Just as helpfully, we are reminded that Credit Suisse is “the first major institution to be thrown such a lifeline since the global financial crisis”.

Credit Suisse’s shares had earlier crashed as much as 31% after Saudi National Bank, its largest shareholder, refused to put in any more capital. There was a sharp sell-off in bank shares in Europe and the United States, and Australia’s sharemarket slumped 1.5%, with shares in most major banks leading the market lower. Since the bailout was announced, Credit Suisse’s shares have soared 30%, so… everything’s probably fine now.

MR SMITH COMES TO TOWN

He is leaving his role as director of the Western Australian branch after just 20 months ($). It was a tough 20 months too — after last May’s federal party’s wipe-out in a state that is usually a stronghold, party president Richard Wilson quit in October. Wilson had lasted just 13 months, and his leaked farewell email painted a picture of a party riddled with “disunity”, public score-settling and “toxic self-interest”. Earlier this year, Libby Mettam replaced David Honey as party leader, meaning all two of the lower house Liberals left in WA after the 2021 state election have led the party.

Smith’s unlikely to get an easier time of it over east — after the disastrous results in November’s Victorian election, the party has been doing some public bloodletting. There was the public airing of a scathing report by Mirabella, which argued former leader Matthew Guy was so unpopular and the Liberals’ election campaign so negative that Victorians had no “reason or moral permission” ($) to vote for them. Guy publicly shot back that Mirabella was “factional and juvenile” and that he should resign ($).

Meanwhile, as The Australian reported earlier this week ($), Smith’s predecessor Sam McQuestin is being sued by the Australian Electoral Commission for alleged unlawful advertising during last year’s federal election.

ON A LIGHTER NOTE

What does it mean to be alive (OK, maybe “lighter” isn’t the best descriptor)? Columnist and science reporter for The New York Times Carl Zimmer has put a lot of thought into the matter for a new book that assembles such attempts at a definition as “Life is a metabolic network within a boundary” or, and I think we’ve all said this at one time or another: “Life is a monophyletic clade that originated with a last common universal ancestor and includes all its descendants.” He’s still stumped.

“It does feel like it should be easy because we feel it,” Zimmer tells Vox’s Brian Resnick. “Our brains are actually tuned to recognising things like biological motion. We’re sort of hardwired for recognising life. But that doesn’t actually mean that we know what it is.”

There are hundreds of attempts at definitions throughout scientific literature, but according to Zimmer, they all run up against “edge cases where things get really hard, so then people start arguing about who gets to be in the club”, things that have one or two key indicators of life, but not others. Take a virus — it can reproduce and evolve, but it can’t metabolise, and has no “way of taking in molecules and fashioning those molecules by themselves into new molecules”. Does the fact that something performs complicated biochemical tasks and has a “lifespan”, like a red blood cell, imply life as distinct from the body it is part of? What about the bacteria that both feeds on and provides food to the cicadas it inhabits, with distinct genes but no possibility of existence distinct from its host? Is that alive?

Anyway, happy Friday!

SAY WHAT?

Surprised to hear that Donald Trump is apparently claiming that my late sister Diana wanted to ‘kiss his arse’, since the one time she mentioned him to me — when he was using her good name to sell some real estate in New York — she clearly viewed him as worse than an anal fissure.

Charles Spencer

The late princess’s brother took exception to the former president’s claim that all the public figures whose correspondence is collected in his latest book — which includes Diana, along with Oprah Winfrey, the queen and assorted tyrants Trump palled about with in office — wanted to “kiss my ass”. Look, it’s a good line, Charles, but it relies on us believing Trump would say something both self-aggrandising and untrue, which frankly is too much of a stretch.

CRIKEY RECAP

How the pokies came to decide who gets to run New South Wales

Charlie Lewis

Mar 16, 2023

32

“Any government wondering what it’s like to fall foul of the clubs needs only look to the events of 2011 and 2012, when Clubs Australia (the national guise of ClubsNSW) rolled out its highly successful opposition to the gambling reforms independent MP Andrew Wilkie made a condition of support for the minority government lead by Julia Gillard.

“The campaign, called ‘Won’t Work Will Hurt’, targeted marginal Labor electorates, mailing material to residents across 18 seats in NSW and everything Labor held in Queensland. This was followed by community rallies by groups across NSW. It bought large billboards in ‘high visibility areas’ naming the local member and asking, ‘Why don’t you stand up for our community?’ The clubs even produced drink coasters, and T-shirts for staff emblazoned with the question ‘Who voted to put me out of work?’

“It worked. Piece by piece, Wilkie’s legislation — which called for a requirement for gamblers to make a pre-commitment on how much they’d be willing to lose and poker machines to be limited to $1 per button-push — was dismantled. That which survived was dutifully repealed by the Coalition when it came to power. All for just $3.5 million of the $40 million war chest the clubs and their backers had put aside.”

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SMH staff are frustrated to be in the news, again

John Buckley

Mar 16, 2023

49

“Inside the newsroom, the [‘Red Alert’] series landed to mixed reviews, Crikey understands. Sources say the reporting has prompted internal criticism of varying shades: some say worthy subject matter was let down by poor reporting; others say it should never have made it into print.

ABC’s Media Watch didn’t take well to the series, either. Host Paul Barry called it ‘extraordinary stuff’, citing Keating’s criticisms alongside those of Nick Bisley, dean of humanities and social sciences and professor of international relations at La Trobe University, who called the reporting ‘hyperbolic’.

“[Bevan] Shields in his note to subscribers said Media Watch ‘professes to be the arbiter of good and bad reporting’ but that it failed in its review of the paper’s ‘Red Alert’ series to offer Herald leadership a right of reply before airing the segment. In his note to subscribers, The Age editor Patrick Elligett hammered the same line.”

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Who can win the hearts of NSW’s Chinese-Australian voters?

Wanning Sun

Mar 16, 2023

4

“Sydney Today, Australia’s largest Chinese-language digital media outlet, has been running a survey about the NSW state election. One question it put to readers was: ‘Will you give preference to a party that is more friendly to Chinese-Australian communities?’ More than 75% of respondents said yes.

“But will the Coalition’s anti-Chinese rhetoric have a negative impact on electorates with large numbers of Chinese-Australian voters, as was the case with the May federal election and Victorian state election? Perhaps, but so far there’s little evidence the Liberals are too concerned about the ‘China factor’.”

READ ALL ABOUT IT

$1m paid to three men on Defence Strategic Review (The Australian)

Experts say NDIS support a ‘postcode lottery’ as autism diagnoses surge (The Daily Telegraph)

Liberal MP blasts Scott Morrison over unknown appointment as second post revealed (Guardian Australia)

Billionaire Bruce Gordon taps pub boom with Scarborough offering (The Australian Financial Review)

Albanese, Wong return fire at Keating but Garrett, unions back former PM (The Sydney Morning Herald)

Farmers’ protest party wins shock Dutch vote victory (BBC)

Honda recalls nearly 500,000 vehicles over seatbelts that may not latch (The Washington Post)

If you love Israel, you must protest this government, says the former prime minister (Vox)

THE COMMENTARIAT

Watering down draft demeans spirit of the voice — Shireen Morris (The Australian) ($): “The government should not weaken the Voice drafting to appease exaggerated concerns. The attorney-general’s suggested change would short-change Indigenous people and invite future bad faith efforts to undermine the Voice.

“The draft amendment is already modest, derived from drafting conceived with constitutional conservatives. The original 2014 drafting created three constitutional guarantees. First, it required Parliament to establish an Indigenous body to advise it and the executive on Indigenous affairs, and gave Parliament power to determine all aspects of the body. Second, it required advice to be tabled in Parliament. Third, it required the houses to consider the advice when debating proposed laws with respect to Indigenous peoples.”

India is the swing state of the future — Misha Zelinsky (The Australian Financial Review) ($): “Looking to do business? India’s fifth-largest economy is enormously tantalising. Want to balance Chinese Communist Party authoritarianism? You need a democracy with 1.3 billion people on your team. After skilled labour? A young, English-speaking population is a boon.

“Viewing India as a prize to be won or typecasting it to a role supporting our own strategies will win no favours.”

WHAT’S ON TODAY

Kulin Nation Country (also known as Melbourne)

• Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury Andrew Leigh will deliver a keynote address at Monash University on “Opportunities and challenges of the digital revolution”.

• Submissions close as part of an independent review into the Maribyrnong River floods in October 2022.

Whadjuk Noongar country (also known as Perth)

• Fortescue Metals Group is appearing in Perth Magistrates Court been charged with 34 counts of refusing or failing to comply with a requirement to provide documents to a WorkSafe inspector within a specified period without a reasonable excuse. The documents relate to cases of alleged sexual harassment at Fortescue’s Christmas Creek, Solomon and Cloudbreak mining operations.

Ngunnawal Country (also known as Canberra)

• Public hearing for the inquiry into Commonwealth grants administration.

Eora country (also known as Sydney)

• Hearing for lawsuits between RTBU and Sydney Trains over industrial action.

• Sentencing for ex-Liberal staffer who lied to ICAC about campaign slush fund.

Nationwide

• Productivity Commission to release 1000-page report on Australia’s productivity problems, across nine volumes and featuring 71 recommendations.