Dear Andreas Smith,

Gone "into hiding" might be overblowing it a little but the judge certainly has a case to answer in my opinion.

This is Geoffrey Watson SC, Director of the Centre for Public Integrity and a former council assisting the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption speaking to Hamish McDonald on RN. He was very scathing of Sofronoff saying Drumgold had been denied procedural fairness.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/breakfast/act-chief-prosecutor-resigns-after-sofronoff-probe/102695506?utm_campaign=abc_radionational&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_radionational

Good to see a flicker of integrity ! I just hope they do the same with the Robodebt culprits !

Dear SteeleRedux

Yes, you are right, it was only released to those two outlets. I misread a Guardian Australia article as saying they that had seen the report, but I was mistaken.

The Australian is Australia’s only national newspaper, the ABC is its pre-eminent news broadcaster. One leans right ideologically, the other left. They are the obvious choices if pre-embargo copies are to be provided to the media.

The Report was handed to the ACT government on 31 July, and was apparently shared with the two news organisations the day before. The Australian published it on 3 August. So not quite a week, but more than a day. According to The Australian, it did not breach the embargo but published the story once it had been leaked from another source. If they intended to break the embargo, I believe they would have acted sooner. My guess is that it was leaked by someone in the bureaucracy or legal fraternity who was appalled, as many people were, by the government’s decision to keep the report secret for a whole month. The ACT government was naïve if it thought such an explosive report of significant national interest could be kept under wraps for that long. It is unfortunate that neither Drumgold nor the police saw the report before it was leaked, but that was surely the ACT Government’s responsibility. Both deserved to be told of the findings as soon as they were delivered.

Higgins and Lehrmann have powerful enemies, and powerful friends. Both have been used cynically and unfairly, sometimes by their purported allies as well as their opponents. Lehrmann may be entitled to compensation for the way Drumgold conducted the case. Whether he is guilty or innocent, Lehrmann is entitled to fair treatment; and so is Higgins. Unfortunately, partisans on both sides seem to feel their cause is so noble they are justified in vilifying the other party and trampling on their rights to legal, and natural, justice

It seems fairly clear that Sofronoff had strong reservations about the report ever being released in full. After all, the ACT government has/had all sorts of reasons why they would want to suppress certain aspects, from trying to protect Drumgold to not giving Lehrmann's team even more ammunition in the purported case against the ACT government.

He ensured that the government had no choice other than to release the full report, consequences be damned. Forcing governments to do the right thing is, of course, frowned on in certain circles, hence all the talk about 'getting' Sofronoff.

‘Oh what a tangled web we weave/When first we practice to deceive,’.
Very prescient of Scott.

It was interesting to see ACT Chief Minister Andrew Barr interviewed on 7:30 last night. He complained that the leaking of the Sofronoff report was feeding a media circus, and admitted that the inquiry always had political dimensions.

What hypocrisy. The inquiry was always political because that’s what Drumgold and the ACT government wanted it to be. It was initiated because Drumgold wanted it, making a series of allegations that all proved to be false – not least the claim of political interference, in an effort to further the vicious and unfounded attacks on Linda Reynolds. The whole point was to manufacture a media circus. Unfortunately for Drumgold and the ACT government, that media circus didn’t quite take the form they hoped for. So now the government is trying to shoot the messenger in the hope of deflecting attention from its own malice and deficiencies.

Mhaze

You may be right that Sofronoff released embargoed copies because he suspected that the ACT government would otherwise not release the report in full. That may well have been a well-founded suspicion – the government had strong political and financial motives to suppress at least parts of the report, and their stated intention of not releasing it for a month after they received it suggests at least that they wanted time to plan a strategy to contain the political fallout. The fact that they did not share copies of the report with either Drumgold or the police as soon as they received it is also suggests panicked damage control.

But even if that suspicion was well-founded, it was probably a dumb thing to do by Sofronoff. It could have breached the ACT’s Inquiries Act, and has allowed the ACT government and its media and political allies to shift attention from the content of the report to the manner of its release.

Dear Rhian and mhaze,

Under the ACT Inquiries Act it was the responsibility of the Inquiry to send a draft to any person who had adverse findings made against them and for their response to be included in the final report.

Under the same Act the government had one month to consider the report and then choose whether to release it in full. If they chose not to then they would have to explain their reasoning to parliament.

Sofronoff may well have felt justified in leaking after that period but to have done it before he had even handed it to the government, particularly to a specific Murdoch opinion writer who has maintained a constant and at times vicious defence of Lehrmann smacks of something else.

Anybody claiming Lehrmann wasn’t afforded due process can’t in any way support what Sofronoff did without being deeply hypocritical.

The report can be found here: http://www.justice.act.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/2263980/ACT-Board-of-Inquiry-Criminal-Justice-System-Final-Report-31-July-2023.pdf