Australian Lawyers Weekly reports
As deliberations on launching an inquest into the death of the woman who accused Christian Porter of rape continue, the Federal Court of Australia has granted the South Australian Coroner access to the unredacted copies of the ABC’s defence.
An interim suppression order made on three sections of the ABC’s defamation defence and the former attorney-general’s reply has been amended to permit the South Australian Coroner to have access in the days before the Federal Court is set to decide whether these same sections should be made available to the public.
The sections have been under temporary suppression orders since beginning of May after Christian Porter’s legal team quickly took objection to the ABC’s defence. As part of the mediation agreement between ABC and Mr Porter, the two parties asked the court to have them permanently removed from the court file, but Justice Jayne Jagot refused to grant this on the grounds that they “simply asked for it”.
