ACT government seeks legal advice over early release of report into Bruce Lehrmann's prosecution
The ACT government is seeking legal advice about whether the chair of the inquiry into the prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann for the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins breached the inquiries act by leaking the report before the government saw it.
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TVTranscript
00:00 It is a hole that seems to get deeper and deeper as we go along.
00:06 You may remember at the weekend the ACT's DPP Shane Drumgold has resigned after having
00:12 a chat to the Attorney General about his job now being untenable after the findings were
00:20 made public in the media and this was before the government had released it of course.
00:27 And yesterday the government came out and did its formal public release but we heard
00:33 very little about how it's responded to the recommendations of the report and quite a lot
00:40 about how angry the Chief Minister is that the media saw some of the scathing comments
00:48 made about Mr Drumgold before he did.
00:52 This should have drawn a line under this banner.
00:57 Unfortunately whilst the recommendations I believe are sound and we have accepted them,
01:03 the whole process, the leaking, the engagement with journalists on the way through leaves
01:11 in the minds of many people questions.
01:15 So what are the options?
01:17 Well the Chief Minister says the ACT's Integrity Commission could be one place that this could
01:25 be referred to if they decide that there has been a breach.
01:29 That's a very small body that usually looks after land disputes so they better gear up.
01:37 The other thing of course is that the government has talked about sending a letter to Shane
01:42 Drumgold putting the findings of the report about his actions and asking him to respond
01:51 to that.
01:52 There was some talk of the potential for a criminal charge.
01:56 I have to also add though that Mr Drumgold has vehemently defended himself.
02:03 He says he doesn't accept the findings of the report.
02:07 He says that he wasn't dishonest and there was no sort of willful misleading of anyone.
02:14 So we'll have to wait and see where that goes as well.
02:18 There's certainly no definite answer on that yet either.
02:23 So has there been any response Elizabeth?
02:27 Well no response.
02:28 No response really from Walter Sovronoff after yesterday's press conference with the Chief
02:34 Minister and the Attorney General.
02:37 I have been talking to other people who were involved in the inquiry, the police and the
02:44 Victims of Crime Commissioner.
02:47 They haven't responded to the report other than to sort of welcome it, particularly the
02:55 Victims of Crime Commissioner who was pretty well exonerated after being accused of stepping
03:01 outside her remit but it was found, it was admitted by police that they had made a mistake
03:09 about that.
03:11 But they are now trying to shift the debate to concern that victims might not come forward
03:18 after this whole saga keeps trundling along.
03:24 And so they're concerned to sort of shift the debate to that now.
03:28 But that might be a bit of a tall order given the acrimonious situation.
03:35 So we'll just have to see how that pans out.
03:38 [BLANK_AUDIO]