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Porter’s legal team identifies particulars of defamation case
The legal team behind former attorney-general Christian Porter has indicated some of the material that may form the evidence in the Federal Court proceedings and has requested information from the ABC to avoid “wasted” time and costs.
Naomi Neilson
In new submissions to the Federal Court, Christian Porter’s lawyer Rebekah Giles said the legal team was collating material that may prove the Australian public was aware that he was the cabinet minister accused of a historic rape after either reading the article in question or learning about its contents via other means.
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Ms Giles said that they would be using data that suggests Google searches of Mr Porter’s name “increased significantly” and “much more so than any other senior male cabinet” after the article was published. She also claimed the same could be said for the LinkedIn profile of Mr Porter’s wife, Jennifer Porter.
By midday Wednesday, 3 March, the team also claims that in response to a Google search of “who is the minister accused of rape”, Mr Porter’s name appeared.
“There were also an overwhelming number of members of the public who named Mr Porter as the minister… but did not specify how they came to that knowledge. Some of those people contacted our client. The sheer number of such persons lead to the conclusion that his identification was reasonable even without knowing how each such person came to that conclusion,” Ms Giles wrote in the submission.
Under aggravated damages, Ms Giles set out a number of grievances with the article or with relevant behaviour that the team will be relying on during the hearing. The first is an alleged failure to disclose in the article that the “statement” by the supposed victim was unsigned and that her parents said it could be embellished.
The list included the “hypocrisy” of Louise Milligan’s criticisms of ABC Media Watch host Paul Barry for not giving her the opportunity to respond to a story, “when she made a deliberate decision to give no such consideration to Mr Porter”.
The team will also take aim at a number of social media posts, including allegations that Ms Milligan and other ABC staff retweeted “despicable, unjustified and improper comments made by the former Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull” stating that there was a need for an inquest to question the complainant’s cause of death and suggesting that it may not have been suicide but something to do with Mr Porter.
They also claimed that shortly after the publication of the article but before the press conference, Ms Milligan directed her Twitter followers with the use of the hashtag #cabinetminister to a thread which named Mr Porter over 500 times.
To avoid further legal costs, the legal team is requesting assistance in identification, viewer numbers for the ABC Four Corners program and other relevant material. They have also requested that any messages sent over an encrypted messaging app by Ms Milligan relevant to the proceedings are handed over.
A response by the ABC and Ms Milligan is yet to be published.
