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Former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann twisted his head as he sat in the witness box to watch footage of himself entering Parliament House in the early hours of March 24, 2019, a few steps ahead of his then colleague Brittany Higgins.
There he was on the big screen, approaching the security desk and chatting to the guards. They were arranging interim passes, he told Justice Michael Lee.
Bruce Lehrmann arrives at court on Thursday with one of his barristers, Steven Whybrow.Credit: Rhett Wyman
Now they were passing through the security gates, Lehrmann in black pants and a blue shirt, Higgins in a white dress. Higgins went through twice before removing her shoes and putting them through the metal detector. Lehrmann waited for her on the other side of the barricade, leaning one arm on the table.
The footage then cut to a corridor leading to the parliamentary office of their then boss, Senator Linda Reynolds. A security guard accompanied them as far as the door, and Higgins passed through it two steps ahead of Lehrmann. The door closed and the security guard headed back down the corridor alone.
And after that, according to Lehrmann, nothing of note occurred. The pair had been drinking for several hours and while he could not have driven himself home, he was not so intoxicated that he was incoherent or unaware of his surroundings, he told the court.
He went to his desk to retrieve his keys, put down his two phones, and noticed some Question Time folders opposite him.
CCTV footage of Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins on the night of March 24.
“Based on the conversations that I had at The Dock [hotel], I took it upon myself to make some notes while it was fresh in my mind against various briefs in those folders,” he told the court.
He did not speak to Higgins again and did not hear her. After 30-40 minutes, he turned around and noticed some missed calls on his phones, which had been on silent. Then he left the building 45 minutes after they arrived.
He did not notice whether she was still there.
“I thought I would get what I needed and head off,” he told the court. “I thought that was sufficient.”
The alternative version of what happened in the intervening half hour has been widely traversed. Higgins claims that Lehrmann raped her in the office, and the allegations she made on The Project are the subject of the current defamation claim that Lehrmann has brought against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson. The broadcast did not identify Lehrmann by name. It is a matter for determination whether he was identified at all.
The criminal case against Lehrmann was aborted for juror misconduct and not re-prosecuted out of concern for Higgins’s mental health.
And when the barrister for Network Ten cross-examined Lehrmann, this alternative version started to pull into view.
It was put to Lehrmann that some weeks before the night in question he had described Higgins as good looking, encouraged a mutual friend to ask her to come to the pub and taken away the phone of Higgins when she wanted to leave. Lehrmann did not recall the first two propositions and denied the third.
He also agreed that it was commonplace for wine and other alcoholic beverages to be consumed in ministers’ offices, and that he kept whisky in his own office. He did not recall drinking it in Minister Reynolds’s office.
Lehrmann, who was matter-of-fact and relaxed as he gave his evidence, said no sexual assault allegations were raised with him until his new employer, British American Tobacco, was contacted by a journalist from The Australian.
By this time, he had already heard about the allegations made by Higgins, and was as shocked by their substance as the next person. It was claimed on the program that all parties had been asked to comment. Lehrmann, who had changed phone numbers years earlier, did not read an email sent to him by the producer of The Project until a week after the program had aired. By then he had been admitted to a psychiatric clinic.
“Did you sexually assault Brittany Higgins in that office on that evening?” Lehrmann’s barrister Steven Whybrow asked him.
He replied: “Absolutely not.”
The trial continues.
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