Murray Olds: Australian correspondent on Network Ten paying Lisa Wilkinson $1.15 million to cover Lehrmann costs

Network Ten has been ordered to pay journalist Lisa Wilkinson $1.15 million to cover the court costs incurred during the Bruce Lehrmann case.

Lehrmann had taken Ten and Wilkinson to court - claiming he was defamed by an interview with Brittany Higgins.

Australian correspondent Murray Olds says Wilkinson and Ten stepped up to defend themselves.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Want to get to the bottom of what's going on
over in Australia with the sheer scand or Murray olds
as our Australia correspondent, Hey Murray, afternoon, Ryan, so's what
is going on? Did he? Is he guilty of what
they say he's guilty of?

Speaker 2 (00:13):
Wait, this is just a phony war. We haven't even
had the election date announced and busy blazing away. We
had maybe the election date this weekend and yet the election,
the electorate's already drowning in all the cash both sides
are splashing around anyway, I mean seventeen and a half
eighteen billion dollars on health spending justin twenty four hours

(00:36):
this week. Anyway, today that was Murray what he's one
of the hard heads in the government and that clips
you played the line on the short of it is
over here. Maybe it's the same in New Zealand. Our
parliamentarians state and federal have to reveal their financial interests
in a parliamentary register to allow and order to take

(00:59):
place to make sure that they're not getting tip offs
from I suppose you know, pertical insider trading. Let's leave
it at that. So today Labor says what happened back
in the day before in the global financial crisis. The
banks were under enormous, enormous pressure. So twenty four hours
before the government moved here to bail out the banks,

(01:22):
giving them billions of dollars in guarantees. Peter Dutton, then
a young, thrusting backbenure, I think he was a backbencher,
was certainly young and thrusting. He goes out and snaffles
up massive amounts of Combank, Westpac and National Australia Bank shares.
Now the following day the government bailout has announced those

(01:43):
shares he bought for about twenty three dollars, sells them
twelve days later, or twelve days later, they were worth
almost thirty Now this, according to the government, smells to
high heaven. Now it smells to me that the government
has on a fishing expedition year. The government is looking
to hurt Peter Dutton. Dutton is riding very, very highly

(02:04):
opinion polls over here. The fact of the matter is
Dutton is a multi multi millionaire, but he hates people
thinking about that. He likes to be known as you know,
the humble Queensland cropper who's done good. Wants to look
after mums and dads and their money. The fact is
he's rolling in cash and so's his wife. They're very
successful couple. Now Labour's trying to paint him, you know,

(02:26):
as this dreadful conservative crook. He says, Labor's just looking
for dirt and smearing the muck around in the lead
up to an election. They're going to get lots and
lots of this. It becomes a bit tightome after about
forty eight hours, honestly, because both sides are throwing as
much as they can find, as hard as they can.

Speaker 1 (02:44):
Ten has been ordered to pay Lisa Wilkinson's court cost.
This is from the Luhman saga. What exactly are they
paying for? Do we know how much?

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Yeah, they have to pay one point one five million
dollars to cover her legal costs. You may remember that
Bruce Lherman took Ten and specifically Lisa Wilkinson, she was
then working for the Ten network. Lherman took them to
court alleging he had been defamed. He was to famed,
he said in an interview, that Lisa Wilkinson did with

(03:14):
Britney Higgins. Now, of course, Higgins claimed that she was
raped by Luhrman at part of the house. They were
colleagues at the time in the media team of one
of the ministers there, Linda Reynolds. Now, his criminal trial
ended with no findings against him after dura misconduct, and
the Director of Public Prosecution said, we're not going to

(03:36):
put the Britney Higgins through another trial. So he then
went the defamation route and he lost. He lost the
defamation case last year that now was subject to an appeal.
Wilkinson and Ten of course defended themselves. But here's the thing.
Wilkinson decides that oh no, no, no, I don't want those,
you know, the lawyers that Channel ten's got. I want

(03:58):
my own lawyers. And now the court's rule that her
own legal team has to be funded in very very
large part by Channel ten. Why. I'm not sure it
was her decision to go with her own legal team,
but the court has ruled that that's fair enough and
it must be up to tend to actually pay over
a million dollars for her legal costs. I'm not sure

(04:21):
how that works, but I'm a little lawyer.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
No sounds like you need to be though that for
that money, Murray, thank you for that. Murray helps our
Australia correspondent with us for more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive,
Listen live to news talks.

Speaker 2 (04:34):
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