The former judge who scrutinised Bruce Lehrmann’s criminal prosecution may be legally thwarted from overturning a finding he engaged in “serious corrupt conduct” during the inquiry.
Walter Sofronoff KC has gone to the federal court to challenge the lawfulness of the Australian Capital Territory corruption watchdog’s findings handed down in March, stemming from leaks to the journalist Janet Albrechtson.
But the watchdog on Tuesday said its report may be protected by parliamentary privilege.
“It raises the question of whether these proceedings should take place at all,” Scott Robertson SC, for the ACT Integrity Commission, told the court.
Parliamentary privilege is designed to allow parliament to go about its business without outside interference, such as from the courts.
The commission is overseen by a parliamentary committee but its report has also been published online.
The speaker of the ACT parliament, Mark Parton, was also seeking to be involved in the case.
But Adam Pomerenke KC, for Sofronoff, suggested that would only duplicate what the commission would say.
The case is due to return to court in July.
Sofronoff, a former Queensland supreme court judge, chaired a board of inquiry into the ACT’s criminal justice system after controversy plagued the prosecution of Lehrmann.
Lehrmann was accused of raping Brittany Higgins in the ministerial office of Senator Linda Reynolds at Parliament House in 2019. He has denied those allegations.
A 2022 criminal trial was abandoned with no verdict because of juror misconduct.
While prosecutors opted not to hold a re-trial, their public statements and treatment of witnesses was put under the microscope by the Sofronoff inquiry.
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It found the territory’s top prosecutor, Shane Drumgold, had lost objectivity over the case and had knowingly lied about a note of his meeting with broadcaster Lisa Wilkinson.
Drumgold resigned and launched a legal challenge, which upheld most of the inquiry’s findings.
But the ACT supreme court struck out an adverse finding about how Drumgold cross-examined Reynolds during the Lehrmann trial.
It also ruled Sofronoff’s behaviour during the inquiry gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias and he might have been influenced by the publicly expressed views of Albrechtson, a columnist for The Australian newspaper.
Sofronoff repeatedly messaged with the News Corp journalist and eventually leaked Albrechtson an advance copy of his probe’s final report.
That leak led to the integrity commission’s “serious corrupt conduct finding” in March.