Report into Lehrmann trial to be released early
The fallout out from the report on the prosecution of former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins is set to continue to cause waves in Canberra today after the report made its way into the public domain. The inquiry was set up to look into the conduct of police, prosecutors and the ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner, after Mr Lehrmann's trial was abandoned leaving no findings against him.
Transcript
00:00 The ACT's DPP Shane Drumgold had alleged that police had pressured him not to pursue the
00:08 charge against Mr Lehrman and he also accused police, or sorry, he also alleged that there
00:18 was political interference in the investigation and he did this in a letter to the ACT's Chief
00:25 Police Officer when he called for a full public inquiry. Now many of the allegations that he'd
00:33 made he backed down on during the inquiry. He said he changed his mind particularly about the
00:38 political interference suspicion after seeing the submissions. So that it wasn't surprising
00:46 that there might be some adverse findings against Mr Drumgold but the strength of them
00:52 is probably the thing that is notable. He was accused of making scandalous allegations in the
01:01 report which was written and developed by the inquiry head Walter Sofronov, a former Queensland
01:10 judge who ran this inquiry. The findings also suggest Mr Drumgold had knowingly lied to the
01:19 Chief Justice over an issue to do with journalist Lisa Wilkinson's Logie's speech. Mr Drumgold said
01:29 it was simply a mistake. He's also said that in answers to the inquiry that he felt that he had
01:40 to raise his suspicions with authorities. He felt duty bound to do that. But the really important
01:46 thing out of the findings is that Walter Sofronov found that the decision to prosecute was the right
01:56 one. He said Mr Drumgold had done the right thing. Will there be any consequences Elizabeth?
02:02 Well we won't know that for a little while. Things are moving a bit more quickly than we
02:07 were expecting. The ACT government says it will formally release the report early next week. We
02:14 may not see their response to the report for a little while yet though so we won't know the full
02:20 consequences. There are a lot of recommendations mostly to do with training for police and that
02:26 sort of thing. But also there's a suggestion that the police and the DPP should develop a
02:34 complaints mechanism when they're dealing with each other. And there is a recommendation for
02:42 a protocol to protect things like counselling notes because as you may recall police had sent
02:48 Brittany Higgins counselling notes to the defence team accidentally as it turns out.
02:54 But that did cause a few problems. Just finally what was said about the
02:59 victims of crime commissioner? Well the victims of crime commissioner Heidi Yates was criticised
03:04 by police for accompanying Brittany Higgins to court each day. Police said that was sort of beyond
03:11 her remit but they backed down on that in the hearings saying after they read the Act they
03:17 realised she was doing what she was allowed to do. But she may face some changes to the law
03:25 she operates under after some recommendations from the report.
03:30 [BLANK_AUDIO]