Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial: Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash lashes out, Brittany Higgins was in tears

7.15am WST start - the star witness of next week is likely to be former Ten presenter Lisa Wilkinson

The expert Ten wishes to call - Tim Reedy - told the court he has had more than ten years experience of forensic lip reading.

He became profoundly deaf through a bout of meningitis as a child.

He is also used by UK media outlets on occasions - including this one, where he was asked to determine whether he blieved two footballer had been involved in a racial outburst.

Justice Lee says his job is to come to a judgment using “material than can be properly put before the court.”

He says in his ruling that it is plain to him that specialised knowedge can be gained with experience, and does not have to be scientific.

“It does demonstrate the processes followed by Mr Reedy, and the way in which he has sought to produce a lip-reading transcript based upon the application of his specialized knowledge,” Justice Lee says.

“I am satisifed that the opinions expressed ... are substantially based on Mr Reedy’s specialised knowlegde.

“There is a need to persuade me that the exclusion is justified. I do not believe I will be misled or confused by the evidence.

“I am relatively confident I will be able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

“For this reason, I allow the report.”

And the lip reading expert’s report will be allowed in.

Mr Lehrmann’s legal team is now objecting to the production of a report from a UK lip reading ‘expert’ - which Network Ten want the judge to take into account.

Earlier in the evidence, it appeared Ten relied on a trasncription taken from CCTV footage from the bar where Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann partied on the night before the alleged rape.

The court is told that the UK-based expert has been deaf since the age of four, has a hearing aid - but uses lip-reading every day to communicate.

And lawyer Nicholas Olson says the expert appears to have “varying levels of confidence about the things that he’s put in the transcript.”

Mr Olson asserts the lip reader has not been independently validated, and his report has little probative value.

“It has the risk of being misleading, because the accuracy of the readings is open to question,” Mr Olson said.

“He probably hasn’t even heard an Australian accent before, let alone a drunk Australian.”

Dr Matt Collins for Network Ten is now arguing why it should be admitted as evidence.

He says there were “advantages” to analysing CCTV footage, rather than face to face, including slowing down and zooming in footage.

With legal argument about proposed evidence to be put before Justice Lee - inculding expert evidence, and a report from a lip reader.

Ms Cripps has finished giving evidence and the court is now discussing issues concerning the case and how to proceed.

The lunch adjournment has been taken.

Ms Cripps told the court that in face-to-face sessions with Ms Higgins, it was obvious she was torn between wanting to report the alleged rape and keeping her job.

“She desperately did want to report it but she felt she wanted her job more,” Ms Cripps said.

“Each time I saw her it was about her distress, wanting two different things and they weren’t congruent.

“She said she’d only been in the ACT for six months. She came for this, what she called – and I quote you and it stands out in my memory because it was unusual in counselling – she called it her ‘dream job’.

“And she was here for six months only. This was her dream job.”

Ms Cripps told the court that she first met Ms Higgins at a “meet and greet” after the alleged rape.

She said police officers were also present and that Ms Higgins tried hard to keep her composure but flooded into tears when told that the ‘perpetrator’ had rights.

“There was a lot of distress on her behalf,” Ms Cripps said.

“She was very tearful but she tried very hard to remain composed, very hard.

“But there were times that she really couldn’t and just was in great distress or tears just intensely.”

Rape crisis counsellor Catherine Cripps is about to give evidence. She was a volunteer at the Canberra Rape Crisis Centre, whose services Ms Higgins accessed after her alleged assault.

Detective Harman relays at a later date she was told about a media inquiry that had been received about an assault in Parliament House.

That inquiry had come from a journalist at the Canberra Times in around October 2019.

There was also information that the matter might be raised in Senate Estimates that week.

It fell to the Detective to ring Ms Higgins to tell her about that inquiry.

“I told her the limited information that I had was when I was advised before that there’s been a media inquiry in relation to the matter made with the AFP, and that the sexual assault may be raised during Senate estimates this week,” Ms Harman told the court.

“She was hysterical.”

“At that point, she was very difficult to understand,” she said.

“She was clearly crying during that phone conversation with me, hysterical and hung up abruptly.

“She’s made a comment saying: “I’ll call back next week and just sort of hung up.”

“it was a very abrupt. Obviously I had concerns about her welfare during that call because it was it was hysterical.

“I didn’t quite expect that reaction from her”.

Ms Higgins did in fact ring back, and was “much clamer in her presentation” on that occasion.

Detective Harman is now being cross examined

Detective Harman is now describing the furstration in attempting to obtain the CCTV from Parliament House from the night of the alleged rape in Minister Reynolds’ office.

She describes how she was initially told the footage would need to be “quarantined” before it was handed over to police.

And then, the Federal Election was called - and the AFP were then told there was no-one in Parliament that could even release the footage.

“There was no one that was going to release the footage ... You’re not going to have it,” Detective Harman said.

“So I sort of took that and went okay, we’re not going to get it. There’s no point in making further inquiries into after the election. After the election happened, I went back and I said: “Can I have can I have the footage now?”

“That was definitely a backwards and forwards throughout. And I did escalate that through my management.”

Detective Harman said the “push back” from Parliament was unprecedented in her experience.

“I had not encountered as a police office - I had never encountered such pushback on obtaining CCTV before,” she said.

“And it was incredibly frustrating.”