Latest / The Front / Journalism on trial: Janet Albrechtsen on ex-DPP Shane Drumgold’s ‘terrible decisions’

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Journalism on trial: Janet Albrechtsen on ex-DPP Shane Drumgold’s ‘terrible decisions’ · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It's Friday, February twenty seven, twenty twenty six. Negative gearing
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: could soon be limited to two properties under a plan
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: being examined for the federal budget. Treasury is already looking
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: at changes to capital gains tax discounts for existing properties,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: and now it's also taking a look at negative gearing,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: which allows investors to offset their taxable income with losses
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: from property investment costs. Head of the Bondai Royal Commission,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Virginia Bell told survivors of the December fourteenth terror attack
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: she'll investigate the background of alleged gunman Sejed and nevide Akram,
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: as well as the small police presence at Bondai on
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the day of the massacre and overseas funding of hate
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: crimes in Australia. Those stories alive right now at The
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot au. The Brittany Higgins, Bruce Lammon,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Walter Sofronoff, Lisa Wilkinson's story never stops rolling now a
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  Speaker 1: new chapter. Shane Drumgold, the former Act Prosecutor in the
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Press Council, complaining about the Australian Today journalist and columnist
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: janetal Rexen joins me to explore a finding she and
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: The Australian strongly disagree with. In March twenty nineteen, two
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: young political staffers went into Parliament House in Canberra late
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: at night, and what happened there has taken us all
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  Speaker 1: on a long and rocky road, littered with broken reputations
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and shattered careers. A court has found, on the balance
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  Speaker 1: of probabilities that Bruce Lammon raped Higgins that night, but
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  Speaker 1: he has never been convicted in a criminal court. The
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  Speaker 1: man who tried to prosecute Lahman was former Act Director
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  Speaker 1: of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold, and after the case failed,
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  Speaker 1: the Act Government commissioned retired Judge Walter Sofronov to inquire
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  Speaker 1: into the charging and prosecution of Laman. In twenty twenty three,
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  Speaker 1: Sofronov found Drumgold had misled the court and failed to
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  Speaker 1: live up to his obligations to disclose material to Lahman's lawyers.
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  Speaker 1: Drumgold vehemently denied any wrongdoing and went to the Act
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  Speaker 1: Supreme Court. Justice Stephen kay upheld seven out of eight
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  Speaker 1: of Soefronov's findings against Drumgold. Kay agreed with Drumgold that
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Sofronov's communications with the Australians Janet Albresen during his inquiry
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  Speaker 1: gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias. Then the
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Act Integrity Commission found Sofronov had engaged in serious corrupt conduct.
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  Speaker 1: Sofronoff appealed to the Federal Court and lost. But this
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: unstoppable story didn't stop there. Janet al Brexen is a
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  Speaker 1: columnist with the Australian Janet. For two years now, Shane Drumgold,
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: the former Act Director of Public Prosecutions, has been pursuing
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: a complaint against the Australian in the Australian Press Council.
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  Speaker 1: What is Shane Drumgold's problem.
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  Speaker 2: That's a big question, but in the end it's actually
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  Speaker 2: quite simple.
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  Speaker 3: He had a problem with three of our articles that
• 3:29
  Speaker 3: we published, as you say, two years ago, and he
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: claims that we misrepresented the judgment of Justice Stephen Kay
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: in the Act Supreme Court. Yeah, it's been a long
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  Speaker 3: and winding road to this decision by the Australian Press Council.
• 3:43
  Speaker 3: But essentially Shane Drumgold objected to initially a finding by
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: Commissioner Walter Soffronoff that criticized his conduct of the criminal
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: prosecution against Bruce Lamon in the Brittany Higgins matter that
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: went to the Act Supreme Court, where Justice Ka found
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: that Waltersfferenoff's findings were right, that Shane Drumcold had got
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: things wrong. But Shane Drumgold didn't want to accept that.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: What is the nub of this problem though, Janet, you know,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: where is his critique of the way the Australian covered it.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: The nub of the problem is clear that after that
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: judgment in the Act Supreme Court, we wrote that we
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: described his victory in that case as a pyrrhic victory.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: I used those words of pyrrhic victory and we laid
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: out that firstly, that drum Gold succeeded when he saw
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: a declaration that there was an apprehension of bias in
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Walter Sofferonof's report because of conversations that he had had
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  Speaker 3: with people in the media, including myself.
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  Speaker 2: He won there.
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  Speaker 3: If that was all that Shane Drumgold had sought for
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  Speaker 3: the Act Supreme Court, it would have been a huge
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  Speaker 3: win for him and we would have reported it as
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: a huge win for him. But that's not all that
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  Speaker 3: he wanted. He wanted much more. He asked the Act
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  Speaker 3: Supreme Court to declare that the findings by Walter softren
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Of were legally unreasonable. There were eight findings that he
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  Speaker 3: wanted declared in that way and he failed. Seven of
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  Speaker 3: those eight findings were found by the judge in that case,
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  Speaker 3: by Justice Ka not to be legally unreasonable, and we
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: reported that. And the effect of not getting those declarations
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: was that it was a pyrrhic victory, as I wrote
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  Speaker 3: for Shane Drumgold, because seven of the eight findings by
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: Walter Soffronov were not struck down as legally invalid. They
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: remained standing. That's what we wrote. It was accurate. Then
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: it's accurate now to say that, and that's what we've
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: been fighting the Press Council over.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So this matter went to the Press Council where Shane Drumgold,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: as the complainant, was able to represent himself. Now he
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: is of course a silk the Australian was not allowed
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: to have legal representation at the Press Council. That's something
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  Speaker 1: that our editors have very strongly criticized in some stories
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  Speaker 1: that we've been running in the Australian. Essentially this behave
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: like a kangaroo court where one side was allowed to
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  Speaker 1: have legal representation and the other wasn't. You're a lawyer, Janet,
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  Speaker 1: what's your view of that?
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  Speaker 2: That was just simply unfair.
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  Speaker 3: What it did was allow the Press Counsel, I think,
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  Speaker 3: to give more weight to the statements by someone Shane Drumgold,
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: who is a silk, but he's a criminal lawyer. He
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: is not an expert in administrative law. So it was
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  Speaker 3: very frustrating for us that it just seems that the
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: Press Council did not want to look at this objectively
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  Speaker 3: and clearly the biggest mistake I think that the Press
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  Speaker 3: Council made was to get involved in what was absolutely
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: a dispute about illegal interpretation of a judgment.
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  Speaker 2: They say that it wasn't, but of course it was.
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  Speaker 2: That's what we were fighting about.
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  Speaker 1: The Australian went and commissioned opinions separately from two leading silks,
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Collins KC and will Horton k C. They both returned
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: with similar opinions that essentially the Australian's reporting of justice
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: case findings were upheld. The Press Council was considering whether
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: we had breached its first general principle. Let me just
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: read that to you, Janet. It says ensure that factual
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: material in news reports and elsewhere is accurate and not misleading,
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: and is distinguishable from other material such as opinion. Now
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: you write opinion, you also write news. You're a lawyer,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: but you're also a journalist, so I think you're a
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: good person to ask about this. The Press Council found
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: that we did breach general principle one, and now Shane
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: Drumgold would consider that, I think to be a victory
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: over the Australian. We now have to publish the Press
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  Speaker 1: Council's adjudication. What's your sense of that finding. What's your
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: response to the suggestion that we haven't been accurate or
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: clear or fair accurate?
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  Speaker 2: I mean, we take accuracy incredibly seriously and that general
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  Speaker 2: principle number one about accuracy is at the heart of
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: what we do.
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  Speaker 3: We were correct in our interpretation of the k judgment
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  Speaker 3: two years ago. This is where the Press Council got
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: itself into such a tangle, Claire, because this was a
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: legal barney and it was all laid out in the judgment.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: You literally had to look at the declaration.
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  Speaker 3: The orders that Shann Drumgold got, he did not get
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: the ones that he needed to restore his reputation.
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  Speaker 2: So we were correct back then two years ago.
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  Speaker 3: And the unfortunate thing I think, Claire really and I
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: say this very genuinely, is that mister Drumgold has now
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: secured the second pyrrhic victory because here we are again
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  Speaker 3: explaining because we believe in accuracy and defending ourselves because
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: we believe in accuracy. We are going through those devastating
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: findings that Sofronov made against Shane Drumgold, and that Justice
• 8:52
  Speaker 3: ka said, we're not legally unreasonable, and Justice kay went
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: through these forensically. I don't understand how the Press Council
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: could have.
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  Speaker 2: Got it so wrong.
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  Speaker 3: I can understand the motivations of Shane Drumgog. There was
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: a terrible fall from grace, he lost his job as
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  Speaker 3: Chief Prosecutor and the Aact. I don't understand how the
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  Speaker 3: Press Council could possibly get it so wrong.
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  Speaker 1: One thing that I think everyone can agree that drum
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  Speaker 1: Gold did have a win on is Justice kayse finding
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  Speaker 1: that a layperson might reasonably have apprehended that Walter soffron
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  Speaker 1: Off the commissioner might have been influenced by your views
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  Speaker 1: in determining the issues of the inquiry. Now, when I
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  Speaker 1: read the communications between you and Walter Soffronoff, I see
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  Speaker 1: a journalist doing her job, seeking information, developing a source
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  Speaker 1: relationship with someone that's all, of course been exposed throughout
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  Speaker 1: these various legal processes. How has that felt for you
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  Speaker 1: as a journalist to have your communications with a source
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  Speaker 1: revealed like that.
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  Speaker 3: Well, of course I would prefer not to have any
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  Speaker 3: communications revealed with the source, because I take confidentiality incredibly serious.
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  Speaker 3: But as a person who was there when it happened,
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  Speaker 3: let me tell you two things about this. The first
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  Speaker 3: is that we absolutely understood that Walter Soffronov's motivation in
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: speaking to members of the press, me being one of them,
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  Speaker 3: was that he wanted the press to report accurately, in
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: a timely way and thoroughly and frankly clear. A lot
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: of the media had not been that interested in other
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: aspects of what I call the Higgins Lerman saga, except
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: through the prison of it being Australia's me too moment.
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  Speaker 3: But there was so much more to it. A Soferonov
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  Speaker 3: and his counsel assisting had exposed during that inquiry, through
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: long sessions, cross examining mister Drumgold himself. It was all
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  Speaker 3: laid out, so that was what it was at the
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  Speaker 3: core of mister Soffrenov speaking with me. But the other thing, Claire,
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  Speaker 3: we have to remember to be fair both to I
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: think to mister Softeironov and to the entire process, is
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: that we're talking about an apprehended bias, not an actual one.
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  Speaker 3: The notion that I could have influenced Sophrogno's use is laughable.
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: I was listening, I was asking questions, that I was
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: doing what I was meant to do. But as a
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: matter of law, Shane Drungold absolutely one a declaration that
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: the report was infected by an apprehension of bias. As
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: I said, if he had only stopped their clear he
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: would have had a win. But he went much further,
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: and that's where he got into all sorts of strife.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: Do you think there's a misunderstanding in the legal system
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: about the way journalists do work or should work, and
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  Speaker 1: about the level of contact they should have or are
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: allowed to have with judicial officers, for example.
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  Speaker 3: Yes, I think they operated in this very unreal world
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: where these communications they see them as inherently untoward and
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: they're not necessarily that at all. There was nothing untoward
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  Speaker 3: going on, but unfortunately, at law they are. And that's
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: where the law, I think, sometimes loses a connection with
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: what actually happens in practice.
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: Zooming out right back to the entirety of this saga.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Britney Higgins accused Bruce Lamon of raping her. That accusation
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: was upheld on the balance of probabilities in the federal
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: court and Bruce Lemmon has lost on appeal there. This
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: is about a young woman claiming that she had been raped,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: and then so many things spun off from that, allegations
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: of political conspiracy, the destruction of different people's reputations, defamation
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: cases and now a press counsel Barney overall, Janet, where
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: has this whole saga left Australia? And as you mentioned
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the idea of a me too moment.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: I think the me too part of it stopped a
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: long time ago.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: It became, as I.
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: Said earlier, just so much more than that. And Claire,
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: I keep wondering, Well, I don't wonder, but I keep
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: thinking to myself, gosh, when it ever finish?
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: And it went on for.
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  Speaker 3: So long because so many people made terrible decisions along
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: the way, many smart people made really terrible decisions, and
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: it ended off shooting down in all over the place,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: who had different chapters here. As you say, litany of litigation.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: The cost of taxpos has been enormous, but at its
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: core it's because a number of people who should have
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: known better made very bad decisions, and unfortunately for mister Drogold,
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: he was one of them.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Janet Albreson, thank you very much, thank you. Janet Albresen
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: is a journalist and columnist with The Australian. You can
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: read her work right now at the Australian dot com
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: dot au