When Taylor Auerbach gets revenge on Seven West Media, Bruce Lehrmann and his former close friend, Steve “Jacko” Jackson, producer of Seven’s 2023 Trial and Error, an exclusive interview with the alleged serial rapist, all hell breaks loose.
You can’t fault Taylor’s timing. Nor the dirt he’s about to dish. At the eleventh hour, Auerbach jets back from a NZ holiday, subsidised, no doubt, by Seven’s six-figure payout in a confidential settlement of an injury case against Jackson and Executive Producer Mark Llewellyn. His lawyer, Rebekah Giles, tells the court that Auerbach’s claim included allegations that her client suffered long term “bullying” and “anti-Semitism.”
A huge bonfire of the vanities is soon ablaze with police Cellebrite copies of personal text messages, amongst 2300 pages of documents, tendered in the Federal Court, in an affidavit from Auerbach. The fresh evidence helps Ten get Justice Michael Bryan Joshua Lee to reopen Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson. Lehrmann claims he was defamed by Wilkinson’s February 2021, interview with Brittany Higgins, when the young former Liberal staffer in former Defence Minister, Linda Reynold’s Office, says she was raped by a senior office colleague whom she does not name.
Everything is at stake – especially the colourful career of Seven’s Spotlight’s Executive Producer, Mark Llewellyn, an old school media veteran, who allegedly punched a colleague in 2014. Within a few hours, there are more bodies on stage than in the last act of Hamlet.
Self-styled conning-tower connoisseur, an underwater matters maven, bon viveur and a man who counts as a close pal, ASIO boss Paul “Up Periscope” O’Sullivan, Lehrmann is high maintenance. It’s not just the cocaine, masseuses or the beachfront penthouse near Balgowlah, Seven is said to have funded. Lehrmann is a one-man Bermuda Triangle.
“Thinking my next hustle is running brand rehabilitation for all the guys burned by the Lehrmann yarn by taking them to Gaza to feed starving kids,” writes former Liberal staffer, John Macgowan. “A safer alternative to being anywhere near that story”.
If Llewellyn is colourful, Macgowan is in inglorious Technicolor. He’s a contact Bruce has on speed dial for “baggies” when he has an insuperable urge to “get lit,” in anticipation of a fat defamation payout, on the night of the Higgins Interview. And a powerful figure.
In February 2019, Macgowan took the helm of the NSW Liberals’ Orwellian Accountability Unit, a self-parody of a name for its dirt unit. Did Mcgowan help Auerbach with his research? There’s no reason to disbelieve his story that it came from Lehrmann. But how did Bruce, a former defendant, come to have a copy of an AFP e-brief in electronic form?
Best stick to the facts. There are corpses everywhere. Murdoch agent, Walter Soffranof’s done his dash. Shane Drumgold’s all stitched up. ScoMo’s over and out, replaced in Cook by a McKinsey wonk, Simon Kennedy, a man who claims credit for Job-Keeper. Llewellyn’s in limbo. About to be TKO’d. Photos of Jacko with a naked NSW socialite have cost him a job as NSW Police’s top spin doctor. And Auerbach’s brilliant career is up the spout.
Tay may pick up again with the Daily Fail. Or run Programming at Kim’s ABC.
Once, fully paid-up members of Stokes’ Blokes; those hard-working, hard-playing, frat-boy party animals who make our news, shape our views, and undermine our democracy, create their own suicide-bomber. Auerbach is a kiss-and-tell-renegade on a deathly mission.
He holds a bizarre, manic presser outside his Elizabeth Bay home. His weirdly off-piste street theatre sets off a firestorm. He torches every reputation in reach. It’s a fatal attack on Lehrmann’s already, terminally impugned credibility. Seven allegedly paid $2940 for sex and drugs and wining and dining the Liberal staffer for his exclusive story. Auerbach also serves notice he may sue his scoop for defamation. He has his silk, Rebekah Giles, serve a notice of defamation concerns on Lehrmann. It’s a Ninja warrior soap opera.
Auerbach attracted him, Lehrmann tells him, in the days when he was tarting himself around Sydney media, less because of the $200,000 his agent promises but because he knows Seven’s crew to be sympatico, or as Auerbach helpfully explains, in the Lehrmann V Network Ten Pty Ltd, defamation case, his 2000-page affidavit helps him re-open,
“He appreciated … that I wasn’t sitting with the rest of the feminazis in the press pack.”
More of Lehrmann’s views may be obtained from the fabulous fifth columnist, rape culture apologist and fake psychologist, Men’s Right’s activist, Bettina Arndt, AO, who is holding a series of fund-raising events. You also get a cup of tea and a sandwich to help open your wallet. Keen legal student, Bruce will share his insights into the justice system. It’s a steal for a hundred dollars a pop. Arndt could open her show by explaining why she called Ms Higgins “a lying, scheming bimbo who destroyed a man’s life to save her career”.
Someone should ask Lehrmann where he got the AFP transcript of his trial, together with the texts from Brittany Higgins’ mobile phone. And why he saw fit to photocopy “about five hundred pages of documents” to give to Seven. Auerbach is a sworn witness to this.
Tay-Tay will be otherwise engaged. Possibly with his lawyer or just hangin’ with Macgowan.
Who named this assassin? Kudos. Taylor Auerbach could be a Paddington boutique, or a brand of cologne, or even a legal firm, if you were just looking at the name on the debit entry on a corporate Amex statement. Instead, he is a type of picture of Dorian Gray, the quintessence of our click-bait shop of a debauched, dog-eat-dog, corporate card, fourth estate turned fifth column – less Thomas Carlyle’s watchdog on the constitution than a lapdog; not scrutinizing our ruling elite but getting into bed with them.
At the heart of the drama, is the Morrison government’s bungled cover-up of an alleged rape of a naive, vulnerable, young woman whose ideals attracted her to serve as a junior Liberal staffer to one of the most underperforming ministers in Morrison’s paranoid, bullying, overweening government of corruption and underperformance. The ensuing debacle helped destroy his chances of re-election while Nine’s The Project 21 February interview with Brittany Higgins in which the former Liberal staffer claims she was raped by an un-named senior staffer, The Saturday Paper’s Rick Morton notes, sets off a concatenation of events,
“… civil suits, counter suits, an ACT inquiry into the criminal trial, and then an inquiry into the inquiry into the criminal trial, and more civil suits springing from the ACT inquiry.”
Chequebook journalism is not new. Nor is it new to see news as just another commodity. But a thirty-thousand-dollar Bangkok back-rub and blow bill is nothing to be sniffed at. Finger-wagging, fuddy-duddying and illicit Class A drugs aside, you get a fair picture of the lengths Seven is prepared to go to get an exclusive on an alleged serial rapist. Give him anything he wants. Chuck in another lazy hundred grand for a year’s rent in a beachside – near Balgowlah apartment with spa and pool and “with amazing water and coastal views.”
In an age of decadence and excess when too much is barely enough, there’s more. Auerbach adds a little shock value in his own funniest home video of himself snapping the shafts of former close pal, Steve Jackson’s $2000 golf clubs. Golf’s a blokes’ religion, before we delve into any Freudian layer of meaning. What a way to end a bromance.
Yet we are dealing with an industry whose stock in trade is sensation. Not only is there the horror of taboo violation, but Seven’s silks are also working desperately on the notion that Auerbach’s vendetta discredits his testimony, a fallacy, Lee is quick to dismiss.
“The shorter the iron, the more difficult it is to break.” Justice Lee is such a crack up.
But best straight man goes to Executive producer, Mark Llewellyn who tells news.com.au last May that the Seven Network did not pay Lehrmann for the exclusive interview.
“No one was paid,” Mr Llewellyn tells news.com.au.
Embellished with a paper trail of receipts and invoices, Tay-Tay’s hissy fit is spliced into the Thousand- and One-Nights narrative of how alleged rapist, former Liberal senior adviser to ex-Defence Minister Linda Reynolds, walking advertisement for Bolivian Marching Powder, Thai massage and Walter Mitty spook, Bruce Lehrmann, sued two TV channels for (not naming but still shaming) and defaming him. He thought he had it in the bag.
Now the cat is out. Taylor’s former close friend Jacko’s in the middle of just getting over being given the flick as NSW Police sultan of spin before he’s had time to update his bio on LinkedIn. It’s a sensational subplot but it’s a “rabbit hole”, as Lee puts it, that briefly illuminates the bond between corporate media and police. But not in a good light.
His honour is moved to curtail Taylor Auerbach’s performance on the second day. But not after he’s noted how he’s allowed the young cub to take his revenge strategically, in the privileged and protected (largely male) pulpit of federal court testimony. Of course, some of the testimony will discredit further Lehrmann. If that’s possible. If he’s used material from one court for another purpose, that’s potentially a criminal matter.
Expect Lehrmann’s defamation case to be upheld. But expect damages to be five cents, the lowest denomination coin of the realm. But still worth more than our corporate media which is revealed to be morally bankrupt, if not craven, in pursuit of tabloid sensationalism.
The Devil wears Prada. Auerbach turns out to be a freshly barbered, thirty-something man in dark suit, skinny black tie and fitted white shirt whose tie-pin flashes as he spins on his heel, jaunty as an AFL star fronting an acquittal. Or the picture of Dorian Gray.
In Courtroom 22A, Justice Michael Bryan Joshua Lee reopens and closes the Taylor Auerbach kamikaze attack on his enemies who are bit-players in the Bruce Lehrmann V Network Ten defamation saga, a sitting of The Federal Court in Sydney’s Queens Square.
All of Lehrmann’s bootleg testimony is now on file for public access, thanks to Auerbach.
“Let sunlight be the best disinfectant,” Justice Lee reflects. Yet some things cannot be unseen. Witness the sordid spectacle of two major media corporations in a race to the bottom, where tabloid sensationalism and ratings trump truth-telling; a race where illicit drugs, Thai massage services, fine dining, even golf are all part of the do-whatever-it- takes; pay-whateve-it-costs battle to capture our jaded attention. Monetize our attention spans.
It will take more than sunlight to reform our bounty-hunting, boys’ club that rules the roost in a corporate media captured by billionaires who care less about profit than ways their share of our attention can give themselves access to power. But it’s a good start. Ironically, our nation’s flawed defamation laws which so severely curtail speaking truth to power that our fourth estate is a tamed estate if not a fifth column – may have triggered an exposure of such rampant corruption, on such a wide scale, that the genie is now out of the bottle.
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Really looking more like a RW PR and ‘talking point’ ecosystem that caters to above median age &/or sports obsessives via legacy media, then transmitted further by social media; this particular issue is evidence of squeezing out as much tv ‘half life’ as possible, before the next ‘human interest’ issue can entertain and mask any substantive policy deliberations.
Our RW MSM have been given every advantage, starting in ’80s, but to then become a cartel or oligopoly by dilution &/or avoidance of regulation; when they inevitably start to complain about falling profitability or income, they can follow their own libertarian ‘free market’ credo and sell out at the market rate, problem solved (may leave a gap, but there is already a gaping gap on how uninformed or misinformed most Australians are nowadays).
G’day Dear David, you are on fire, as we say in the biz. Thank you for writing this extraordinary article. You are a brilliant wordsmith and storyteller. Nobody does it better. I hope you get to write the screenplay.
Thanks, an informative read.
Regardless of guilt or innocence, the management, reporting and resolution of this episode has been an effed-up debacle from start to finish.
My question is “will anyone be called to account?”
Sadly the answer is probably “No”
Far Kan Ell, ripper yarn, David Tyler! More delicious than my morning cup of steaming chicken & vegetable soup! Koala stamp coming your way.
Wow !
Kerry Stokes, in addition to owning the hapless Channel Seven, also owns Wes Trac the Caterpillar dealership in WA.
Perhaps he needs to send a Cat D11 over to bulldoze the East Coast miscreants into the ocean.
“But how did Bruce, a former defendant, come to have a copy of an AFP e-brief in electronic form?”
Not my area, but wouldn’t BL as defendant have had pre-trial rights of ‘discovery’ of the prosecutor’s evidence against him? Without such a due-process rule, it would be open to prosecutors to “sit on” evidence that might exonerate a defendant. In WA, if I recall correctly, the late Adam Mallard was exonerated after a long period in jail, when evidence of an almost-identical crime that had occurred within a few weeks of the murder he was convicted of, was not disclosed by the prosecutor.
Mike,
1. May-June 2023: News Corp produces a series of pieces attacking Ten’s Lisa Wilkinson and poking holes in Higgins’ account of the alleged rape. They, and other outlets, are aided in this by the steady leak of private text and audio messages sent by Higgins and her partner David Sharaz. It is never established exactly where these leaks come from — Lehrmann’s defence denies any involvement.
2. But the AFP e-brief I refer to is not the one used in the prosecution – it’s the one Lehrmann boasted of having which details reasons not to proceed with a prosecution.
“They also have documents from the AFP saying the charges should not be prosecuted as there is not enough evidence and that legal proceedings would be deleterious to Brittany Higgins,” Mr Auerbach texted his then-boss.
Glad I’m a retired journalist no longer having to play with a (mostly) discredited mob of practitioners of a once relatively noble craft. Of course the industry always had its fly-by-nighters but generally they were well known and treated with the contempt they deserved while the mainstream got on with the job. Now it’s the mainstream which is the problem, a younger cohort brought up being told and believing the code of conduct, and the union, doesn’t tell them what to do. There are still journalists of integrity but they are few and far between and as has been observed elsewhere, the ABC is becoming infected with the same sort of attitude, with some honourable exceptions of course. When those at the top of the media tree are scum, it’s hard to expect integrity at the bottom.
meanwhile the jurist who caused the trial to be aborted walks away scot-free
Simultaneously hilarious and dismaying.
No trace of the “fake psychologist” on the AHPRA website nor the APS (well spotted Mr Tyler).
On her own website Arndt describes herself as a Clinical Psychologist, an apparently ersatz qualification that has ballooned out of a mere three years of tertiary study (2 yrs Science, and 1 year Psych Masters, UNSW) with zero postgrad placement-based learning and supervision (judging by the career timeline). By any measure this is sparse training in Clinical Psychology (now a postgrad specialty or obtained via combined degrees), even back in the day with an undergrad major. Nor is there any indication on Arndt’s cv that her 1-year Psychology Masters was in Clinical Psychology (a detail one might assume she’d be eager to supply if the case).
https://www.bettinaarndt.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Bettina-Arndt-CV.pdf
It seems that without current professional registration or membership of an august professional association to answer to, it’s a field day for a career psychologist to publicly vilify a hurt, hapless, alleged sexual assault victim and to traduce the profession in the process.
It’s a Rogues’ Gallery alright.
Excellent article as always Mr. Tyler.
Frances, you sum it up perfectly. A fraud. You would think also that any allied health professional would “first do no harm”.
Terence, tempting as the bulldozer solution seems – there’s the myth that the problem is caused by a few bad apples, when the issue is endemic corruption. Whilst it’s tempting to take some consolation in the fact that we are in an era where it’s increasingly difficult for our corporate media to post a profit – increasingly MSM is the refuge of billionaires, not so worried about the bottom line but happy to gain access to power.
The $3m payout by the incoming govt to Ms Higgins (so she may afford to take her distance) seems now a drop in the ocean – albeit, the faux brigadier has her snout on Higgins’ trail – the brig may have many more cleaning bills to settle – who knows?
Certainly there will be many more clean-up bills after all the heads have rolled in various parliaments, MPs and their officers, political parties, the PS, the police and judiciary, and last but by far not least the mainstream media.
In the meantime, the filth seems to accumulate, with little room left under the carpet.
One is left to wonder whether, for the NACC, this amounts to exceptional circumstances.
Perhaps Brucey could arrange vestment in Purdue Pharma stranded assets?
I ask again: who IS Bruce Lehrmann that he is such a protected species??? What is his pedigree? Who are his sponsors (other than Kerry Stokes)? Who the fuck is this creepy sleazebag who, as a teenager with NO such experience, somehow became a “senior policy advisor” to the Defence Minister?
Max Gross, a very pertinent question, re. the creepy sleazebag. Casting nasturtiums, one wonders if perhaps smooth-talking Bruce insinuated a member, breaching the rampart of the Minister, going the full Monty… nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean.
I wouldn’t put it past him to throw a leg over in order to get a leg up. He seems to have zero scruples. Auerbach’s affidavit reveals he was born in a small city in Texas, but little else is known about him per education and employment or even when he came to this country or why. Highly suggestive of skeletons in the closet and a desperate man willing to do anything to recreate a new identity for himself.
The malignant tumour of the previous government continues to infect the country.Lerhrmann is merely a runaway symptom of that poisonous,regrettable period.A simpleton who has picked up on the hubris of his employers, thinking that he can get away with anything,emulating the example of the likes of the Christian Porter and Alan Sludge.The problem for our would be wronged Bruce,is that he is so far out of his depth, he cannot recognise his own stupidity. As for the rubbish that masquerades as media,they are doing a remarkably good job of self administering a coup de gras. to themselves The sooner, the better. Something needs to be done about the litigation laws in this country, otherwise we are going down the morals free ,money seeking wreckage that exists in the country of our”great friend”
Tess, thank you.
Max, point taken but, alas, there are countless others just like him around any seat of power.
Kerri, thank you.
Harry, you are right, BL was bequeathed by Morrison, The Accidental Prime Minister. As for BL’s sense of entitlement, he has been mentored well. And you are right, he’s not waving; he’s drowning.
Kangaru. Thank you. Koala stamp, deeply appreciated. I am inordinately fond of the Koala and all other endangered species.
Andrew. Appreciate your comments. I’m particularly concerned with the way a clapped out, loss-making legacy media is rapidly being snapped up by billionaires as their ticket to sit ever closer to those whom we fondly expect to run the ship of state.
However, an Albrechtsen-Rice special in The Australian dated December 3, 2022, suggests they already had access to texts passing between Higgins and her former boyfriend, Ben Dillaway, that went well beyond the criminal brief. It requires little empathy to imagine the distress for a rape complainant to have her intimate texts with a former beau shared with the world. Richard Ackland
“The Lehrmann show may hasten the demise of a hopelessly corrupted corporate media” … As a good Canadian example of seriously ethically-challenged corporate news-media, Postmedia [which among many other Canadian publications also owns both of our national daily newspapers] is on record allying itself with not only the planet’s second most polluting forms of carbon-based ‘energy’ but also THE MOST polluting/dirtiest crude oil, bitumen.
During a presentation, it was stated: “Postmedia and [Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers] will bring energy to the forefront of our national conversation. Together, we will engage executives, the business community and the Canadian public to underscore the ways in which the energy sector powers Canada.”
Also, a few years ago, Postmedia had acquired a lobbying firm with close ties to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney in order to participate in his government’s $30 million PR “war room” in promoting the industry’s interests.
And in May of 2021, the newspaper giant refused to run paid ads by Leadnow, a social and environmental justice organization, that exposed the Royal Bank of Canada as the largest financer of the nation’s fossil fuel extraction. …
Still, other concerned people would’ve worded it more intensely than I:
“I would argue that what little ethical and moral foundation the country has is deeply threatened by the crumbling discipline of a fossil-fuel-based economy and the politics it spawns. Nothing requires government supervision in so many areas (and nothing has anything like the influence on government) as this industry.
“It follows that no other industry remotely requires the amount and kind of honest, wary media surveillance this one does,” the late Rafe Mair aptly wrote in his 2017 book Politically Incorrect, in which he forensically dissects democracy’s decline in Canada and suggests how it may be helped.
“What has the media, especially but hardly exclusively the print media, done in response to this immense challenge? It’s joined fortunes with the petroleum industry. And a very large part of it has done so in print and in public.
“The facts are that the rest of the media have not raised a peep of protest at this unholiest of alliances and that governments contentedly and smugly pretend all that favourable coverage they get proves their efficiency — not that the fix is in and they’re part of that fix. Let me just comment that the difference from 1972 to 2017 in the media’s dealing with governments and politics takes the breath away!”
Despite all this, corporate media expects to have its bacon saved by forced contributions from Meta!
Frank, thank you for the Canadian parallel. Especially “I would argue that what little ethical and moral foundation the country has is deeply threatened by the crumbling discipline of a fossil-fuel-based economy and the politics it spawns…”