The Project’s Lisa Wilkinson warned by prosecutor her Logies speech could delay Brittany Higgins court trial

The television host was told by the director of public prosecutions she could risk the Brittany Higgins being pushed further back if she delivered the Logies speech she had drafted.

Television host Lisa Wilkinson was warned four days before the 2022 Logie Awards her acceptance speech could delay the Brittany Higgins rape trial.

ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum agreed to move the court case after lawyers for accused rapist Bruce Lehrmann argued Ms Wilkinson’s actions threatened a fair trial.

Mr Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty to the charge.

“Your honour, this speech did not need to be made,” the former senior Liberal advisor’s defence barrister, Steve Whybrow, said on Tuesday.

Prosecutors argued the trial did not need to be delayed.

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It can be revealed the ACT’s Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Shane Drumgold told The Project star four days earlier the case was at risk of being pushed further back if she read out her words to the public.

Wilkinson told Mr Drumgold on June 15 she had been nominated for Most Outstanding News Coverage or Public Affairs Report for her interview with Ms Higgins for the Channel 10 show about the sexual assault allegations.

The DPP stopped the 62-year-old mid-sentence and said he was not her editor before he issued her a warning about the consequences of reading the acceptance speech.

Wilkinson went on to win the gong in the news category on Sunday night and delivered the words to a televised audience of more than 885,000 viewers.

“I knew it from the very first phone call I had early last year with a young woman whose name she told me was Brittany Higgins,” she said.

“Four incredibly intense sleepless weeks later, when our story went to air, the entire country knew the name Brittany Higgins.

“As Brittany warned me before we went to air, her story would be seen by many of the most powerful people in this country not as a human problem but as a political problem.”

The defence barrister added further attention was being drawn to the case with a post-award show radio interview with Sydney’s Jonesy and Amanda and claimed more than 800,000 searches were made in relation to Wilkinson’s speech.

Mr Whybrow argued his client did not want to delay the case but insisted the proceedings had to be fair.

Justice McCallum said “regrettably and with gritted teeth” the trial, which was to begin in the ACT Supreme Court in Canberra on Monday June 27, “must be delayed”.

She argued the Logies speech and radio interview “completely obliterated” the line between allegation and the finding of guilt.

“The recent publicity does in my view change the landscape because of its immediacy, its intensity and its capacity to obliterate the important distinctions between an allegation that remains untested at law, and one that has been accepted by a jury giving a true verdict according to the evidence in accordance with the respective oaths or affirmations,” she said.

No new date has been set for the trial, with Justice McCallum saying she was “not in a position” to say when it would commence. 

“I have concluded that the trial date of 27 June, towards which the parties have been carefully steering, must be vacated,” she said. 

“I’m not in a position to say at this stage how long that should be for, I do want this matter to be heard this year.”