Victorian judge to oversee Shane Drumgold’s legal challenge

Victorian Supreme Court judge Stephen Kaye will preside over the legal challenge to the findings of an inquiry into the conduct of former Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold during the trial of Bruce Lehrmann.

At a hearing in Canberra on Thursday, it was revealed that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Lucy McCallum, who presided over the trial, had formed the view that it would “not be appropriate for any current resident judge to hear these proceedings.

The usual practice would involve the appointment of an acting judge by the executive but this was not appropriate given the ACT government was a respondent.

As a result she had written to the Victorian Supreme Court asking for a judge to be made available to hear the matter.

Mr Drumgold launched legal action against the board of inquiry led by Walter Sofronoff KC that ended his career last month.

He is arguing the inquiry failed to give him a fair hearing, denied him natural justice, breached the law and failed to “accord the plaintiff natural justice in that the member for the first defendant gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias”.

Lawyers acting for Mr Drumgold will request the report by Mr Sofronof be quashed entirely or declared invalid.

Alternatively, the former DPP will seek to have the findings made against him quashed or declared invalid.

Originally, Mr Drumgold was also seeking to restrain the ACT’s attorney general, Shane Rattenbury, from taking any action against him on the basis of the report.

However, in Thursday’s hearing Mr Rattenbury, the second respondent, was dropped from the legal action. Mr Drumgold’s action remains in place against the board of inquiry and the ACT Government.

Former Queensland supreme court judge Walter Sofronoff KC, who led the inquiry, will be legally represented in the matter with his lawyers for the board of inquiry revealing that issues of “indemnity” were still being discussed.

Mr Sofronoff KC’s report was sensationally leaked to two journalists before the report was published by the ACT Government.

In a letter to the ACT Government, he revealed he sent it to The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen on the Sunday before he handed over the document to the ACT Government that week.

After news.com.au published a story on the Wednesday August 3 revealing the report found the police were correct to charge Mr Lehrmann and the DPP was right to prosecute, the report was provided by the inquiry to a second reporter from the ABC.

That night, The Australian newspaper published a 2,000 word account of the report’s damning findings.

Mr Sofronoff suggested that both journalists he gave his report to were told the document was provided under embargo until the government released it.

But he said Ms Albrechtsen later contacted him on Wednesday to reveal she had a second copy of the report from another source and as such was free to publish it. Mr Sofronoff said he had no reason to doubt her account.

In the wake of leaks of the inquiry’s final report before it was released by the ACT Government, Mr Drumgold will argue that individuals working on the inquiry failed to comply with rules prohibiting the disclosure of information.

Mr Drumgold went on paid medical leave on a weekly salary of $9,266 a week since he spent a bruising five days in the witness box in May.

Mr Drumgold announced his resignation after private talks with the Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury who indicated his ongoing employment in the role was no longer tenable in the wake of an inquiry into his alleged conduct.

The Sofronoff inquiry found the DPP deliberately lied to the ACT Supreme Court and tried to withhold information from Bruce Lehrmann’s defence team. Mr Drumgold disputes the findings.

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In a statement, Mr Drumgold said he was disappointed that his letter which led to the Board of Inquiry, which had extremely broad powers, did not deliver a seminal moment in time, one to potentially rival the work of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Assault.

“Having now read the report, I dispute many of its adverse findings about me,’’ he said.

“The pre-emptive release of the Report to the media has denied me procedural fairness. It has deprived the ACT Government of the opportunity of considering my conduct objectively.”