Attorney-General Christian Porter’s defamation case has been launched against the ABC and journalist Louise Milligan.
Sydney barristers Bret Walker, SC, and Sue Chrysanthou, SC, will act as counsel, while reputation specialist Rebekah Giles, of Company Giles, will act as his solicitor.
Two years after her record win for actor Geoffrey Rush, Ms Chrysanthou also acted successfully for a series of high-profile defamation plaintiffs such as Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, and more recently Ms Giles and Ms Chrysanthou together represented Brittany Higgins in her settlement against Defence Minister Linda Reynolds.
This time, Ms Chrysanthou, one of the country’s best-known defamation barristers, will turn the tables on the media which has been pushing for a special inquiry into the 1988 case where he would have to prove a negative – that he did not rape a woman 30 years ago when they were both teenagers.
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“Over the last few weeks, the Attorney-General has been subjected to trial by media without regard to the presumption of innocence or the rules of evidence and without any proper disclosure of the material said to support the untrue allegations,” Ms Giles said in a statement on Monday.
“The trial by media should now end with the commencement of these proceedings.”
They say the ABC article states there were “reasonable grounds for suspecting” both that he committed the crime and “contributed to (the woman) taking her own life”, the article conveys Mr Porter was “reasonably suspected by police” of rape.
Ms Milligan, the journalist who broke the story, is also named as a party to the lawsuit.