shifty&shadyminister,

I think to be fair to all parties the police need to reopen their investigation into the reported rape and have Porter sit for a polygraph test.

PS Like you I'm wondering how many people will start coming out of the woodwork with knowledge of the reported rape.

Mr Odious,

You were calling for an independent inquiry and now that you have got it you want to use radical methods to interrogate an innocent person.

What's next? Thumb screws?

shadowminister,

Porter threatened to sue the ABC and Louise Mulligan over the Canberra Bubble story but realised there were too many witnesses so pulled the pin.

This time the prime witness is no longer with us so he may well feel he is on safer ground. However I'm not sure the grounds are. The dossier existed, the deceased made certain allegations, the woman took her own life. These are facts and reporting of such doesn't make the case at all.

What do you think the grounds will be?

SteeleRedux,
Can we have the source of the withdrawal of his defamation case, so we can evaluate his reasons are as you claim.

SR,

For the legally ignorant, Publishing a defamatory document is defamation. (damaging the good reputation of someone). The defence against a claim of defamation includes:

- The article was not specific as to the identity of the plaintiff. However, given the information in the article, the identity was clear.
- That the claim in the article was true. Here, the onus of proof lies on the ABC and Milligan.

Given that the Telegraph had the supposed victim testify and lost, things look grim for the ABC and LM.

shady&shiftyminister,

I don't believe that the ABC said it was true.

Didn't the ABC simply report that a Cabinet minister had been accused of rape?

What if there is a person who has knowledge of what happened and his/her account is different to Porter's?