Lisa Wilkinson entered the witness box for the first time on Thursday, in the Lehrmann v Network Ten defamation trial.
Her testimony and cross-examination followed Lehrmann’s barrister Matthew Richardson questioning The Project producer Angus Llewellyn for two days.
Wilkinson, a journalist at Network Ten’s program The Project and the journalist who interviewed Brittany Higgins in February 2021, is expected to be answering questions on Thursday and Friday of this week.
Women’s Agenda is covering the Lehrmann v Network Ten defamation trial as it happens, with former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann accusing Lisa Wilkinson and The Project of defamation. The case is in reference to an interview between Wilkinson and Brittany Higgins, who accused Lehrmann of raping her inside Parliament House in March 2019.
Content warning: This article contains references to rape and sexual assault.
The phone wiping
Both Angus Llewellyn were questioned over Higgins’ claims that the erasure of screenshots, WhatsApp messages and other data on her phone was as a result of alleged intervention from her former employers at Parliament House.
Higgins indicated her suspicions in the infamous five hour conversation between Higgins, Wilkinson and Llewellyn on January 27 2021, the first meeting The Project had with Higgins.
Llewellyn and Wilkinson claim in their evidence that they urged Higgins to go to Vodaphone or to Apple to determine the true cause of the erasure of her data. Higgins never took it further.
In a text message exchange in February 2021, before The Project went to air, Wilkinson said she wanted to “zero in” on these claims, to which Llewellyn replied the claims cause “unnecessary doubt where there currently isn’t any”.
Llewellyn in the text message in 2021: “(The phone wiping claim) weakens rather than strengthens… her very strong claims.”
In yesterday’s cross-examination of Llewellyn, Richardson questioned the credibility of these claims, particularly since Higgins never took the issue further when she was pressed about it by the team at The Project.
However, Llewellyn maintained this conversation in January 2021 was the first time the group met.
Llewellyn: “This is a conversation recorded on a phone in a hotel room. It’s not sworn evidence.”
This morning, in her cross examination, Richardson also pressed the issue with Wilkinson.
Richardson suggested to Wilkinson that she and the production at The Project avoided the issue and the claims Higgins made about her phone because it presented a “credibility problem for her source”.
While Wilkinson agreed with that suggestion, she disagreed with Richardson suggesting this act “contradicts” the role of a journalist.
The bruise
Once again, the issue of the bruise was brought up by Richardson, especially the fact that the image provided to The Project was a screenshot, instead of an original image.
In her evidence, Wilkinson was asked about the credibility of the image. She conceded she was not a “tech-savvy person” and didn’t know what metadata was at the time, let alone how to check for it.
Richardson asked Wilkinson whether she had asked Higgins for more information on the bruise at the time of the first meeting, but Wilkinson said she felt it would be inappropriate.
Wilkinson: “She was talking about her own sexual assault and if you’ve ever spoken to survivors of sexual assault, these are very difficult conversations to have There was a lot more that needed to be done before [the broadcast of] anything that was discussed in this five-plus hours of conversation that we were having.”
The speech
Wilkinson won a Logie award in 2022 for her interview with Brittany Higgins. She accepted the award and gave a speech eight days before Lehrmann’s criminal trial commenced.
The speech is a main point of contention during the criminal trial and was raised this morning in Richardson’s cross examination with Wilkinson.
Richardson suggested to Wilkinson that it would be an “obvious interpretation” by the audience listening to her speech that Wilkinson believed Higgins’ claims, which would contradict the objective nature of journalism.
Wilkinson denied this.
Wilkinson: “I was celebrating her courage.”
Wilkinson’s cross-examination will continue today and tomorrow.
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PHOTO CREDIT: Instagram @lisa_wilkinson