Lisa Wilkinson lawyers up
Lisa Wilkinson has called in top lawyer Matthew Collins after he called her Logies speech "ill-advised", in which she discussed the high-profile case of Brittany Higgins.
Matthew Collins, president of the Australian Bar Association, told Seven’s Sunrise on Wednesday morning that The Project host may be in serious trouble following scathing comments made by ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum, who made the decision to delay the trial.
“It’s certainly possible that the authorities will be looking at speech she made to the Logies and assessing that speech went against the standard which applies in this branch of the law,” Dr Collins said.
“That standard is, did anything that she did have a tendency to interfere with the administration of justice?”
The Australian claims that just hours after Collins made these comments, he was contacted by Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.
Ten confirmed that Dr Collins had been called upon to represent the network and Wilkinson, adding that Ten “fully supports Lisa Wilkinson”.
“Both Network 10 and Lisa Wilkinson take their legal obligations very seriously, including in the preparation and delivery of her speech given at the Logies event,” a spokeswoman said.
“In light of the continuing proceedings, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this time.”
While on Sunrise, Collins added that journalists in the mainstream media “understand the risk inherent in talking about cases which are about to go to trial before courts, particularly serious, high-profile cases”.
“So clearly this was ill-advised,” he said.
“The whole point is that everybody in our community facing a serious charge like this is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and that means that going into the courtroom there should be no preconceptions one way or the other, so that the jury just sits and focuses really keenly on the evidence as it unfolds in the witness box, and puts out of their mind anything which they might have seen in the media, or God forbid and often far worse, in social media.”
Due to the high-profile speech, ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum called for the trial of Bruce Lerhmann, who is accused of sexually assaulting Brittany Higgins in 2019, to be delayed.
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