“It just didn’t happen” … But will it go away? … Pushing through … Holes in the case … First law officer with an unresolved allegation of rape … Career on hold, but ultimately kaput … Polly Peck on the case
His main message was that “nothing in the allegations ever happened”. He comprehensively avoided using the word “rape”.
His memory of the events during a debating competition held at the University of Sydney 33 years ago was not terribly clear.
He thinks he remembers a formal dinner and bowls of prawns, there was dancing, walking the young female debater back to her room, and getting her to show him how to iron a shirt because, in true Tony Abbott style he had never ironed a shirt before.
He was 17 and the young woman was 16.
Nothing else ever happened. Tellingly he said that he had faced difficult circumstances before, but he “just pushed through”. And here he was again, pushing through, trying to wrestle an unresolved allegation to the floor.
This was an arrogant performance in which Porter portrayed himself as the victim of trial by media. He had been a privileged boy, now a powerful man – a protected species all his life.
Unfortunately for the attorney general his denial won’t make the untested allegation disappear. The tears were droplets of self-pity – the realisation that his swaggering dream of the prime ministership will never be realised.
Porter didn’t go into parliament to be the attorney general with a side bar in workplace relations.
As performances go in the pantheon of politicians trying to salvage their careers, it never got close to the heights of Richard Nixon’s “Checkers” speech.
Throughout the media conference Porter looked depleted, wrecked – he would need to take some weeks leave “to assess and hopefully improve my own mental”. He said he was “happy” to answer questions – he looked anything but.
He could have said that those weeks of absence should be used for an independent inquiry which would examine all the details, including the correspondence, the dead woman’s friends and family, the other debating contestants and what they remember.
It could bring some badly needed further information about the conduct of the first law officer, instead of this raw and unworthy attempt to shove it under the carpet.
Porter lent on the allegations against Bill Shorten that were floated during the last federal election, and earlier – but like Porter the leader of the opposition was “duty bound to remain silent”.
In general the media left Shorten alone, but “with me certain outlets couldn’t even give it a week without trying, possibly convicting, me publicly with allegations”.
Porter won’t stand down because that would create a “new standard”, whereby anyone in public life could have their “career ruined”. For the good of not creating a precedent he was staying put.
Actually, plenty of careers in politics and elsewhere have been “ruined” because it was important that the conduct of public affairs not be unduly sullied. Porter’s career is not particularly precious at all. He’s chosen politics, after all, a pathway strewn with discarded souls.
Dominique Strauss-Khan still lost his job as director general of the IMF after a court found him not guilty of raping a hotel maid. And now the government of Mexico is being torn apart because President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is standing by one of his candidates accused of sexual assault.
Porter also clutched the claim that as a Perth prosecutor he was dedicated to supporting victims.
“As a prosecutor for years, I helped victims. I prosecuted in trial and at sentence the most serious sexual assaults against women and children.”
Actually others in the Perth legal community at the time have clearer memories of him prosecuting $50 Kmart shoplifters. See the notorious case of the Stanley Dynagrip chisel set.
There are at least three holes in attorney general (on leave) Christian Porter’s address to the nation.
First. He complained, tearfully, that no one had ever contacted him about this story and that all he knew about is what he had read in the newspapers and online.
“No journalist has put the detail of the allegations to me in a way that would allow seeking a response, not ever. All I know about the allegations is what I have read in the media.”
This is untrue and a repeat offence. Various media organisation put calls for comment into his office this week. Porter made the same misleading claim after the ABC broadcast Inside the Canberra Bubble last November – that the ABC never contacted him prior to the program going to air – only to withdraw it when 4 Corners pointed out he was fudging the truth.
So did the @SMH – as recently as yesterday. https://t.co/htHpFT6Oas
— Kate McClymont (@Kate_McClymont) March 3, 2021
“I am personally struggling to wrap my head around….why I have never been contacted by anyone…no journalist has ever put the allegations to me” @cporterwa
— Laura Jayes (@ljayes) March 3, 2021
At the same time he said he was not able to comment on the rape allegation because he was following “the rules”. The NSW Police had it under “investigation” – an investigation that did not involve speaking to Porter.
Only when Mick Fuller and his plods were safely off Porter’s back did he put his head above the parapet. He hid behind self-imposed “rules” until the coppers were off the case.
Second. He dismissed the idea that an independent inquiry should be held into the rape allegation, even though he is absolutely confident that nothing adverse to him would be discovered. The High Court only had an investigation into Dyson Heydon, he claimed, because it concerned workplace health and safety issues. Yes, he actually said that.
Porter believes if there was an investigation into his case it would be a civil inquiry into a criminal matter where the balance of probabilities would apply and he would have to “disprove something that didn’t happen 33 years ago”.
He believes there is no point in having an independent inquiry because he thinks his denial is sufficient. Since when?
Third. He said Morrison spoke to him last week after the PM’s office received details of the alleged rape and its circumstances from the complainant and a friend.
Strangely, Porter claims he received no “substantial details at all” about the allegation. The suggestion is that Morrison sent it to the AFP and the attorney general never asked to see the correspondence. It beggars belief.
A spokesmuffin for Porter confirmed this to the Guardian after the media event yesterday:
“Further, the attorney general has never seen or had put to him the statement or pack of documents from the complainant that media has used as the basis for their reporting. To have received them when he was the subject of them and they were matters for law enforcement agencies, it would have been inappropriate for him to access them.”
Holes, holes, holes that need to be filled. At the end of it all, you can’t have properly functioning first law officer with an unresolved allegation of rape hanging over his head. Morrison, Porter et al have not registered that society is undergoing a transformative moment and the ground has shifted under their feet.
I wonder what Jen would say.