A judge banned reporting of an application in the Bruce Lehrmann rape case because she was "not prepared to contribute to the media frenzy", it can now be revealed.
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The case of Mr Lehrmann, whose trial was aborted because of juror misconduct, returned briefly to the ACT Supreme Court on Monday.
Chief Justice Lucy McCallum, the trial judge, published a redacted version of a judgement she had handed down in closed court last December.
Parts of the judgement dealt with an application Mr Lehrmann's lawyers had filed in November 2022, at which time a retrial was pending.
Two days after the application was filed, Chief Justice McCallum took it upon herself to ban publication of its contents.
She did so because the case had attracted "an enormous amount of media attention", and "a further media frenzy" surrounding the application was likely to jeopardise the planned retrial.
About a week later, in early December 2022, the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions discontinued the case.
The director, Shane Drumgold SC, said at the time of his decision experts had indicated a retrial would pose an unacceptable risk to the life of alleged victim Brittany Higgins.
Mr Lehrmann has always denied raping Ms Higgins at Parliament House in March 2019, when the pair were Liberal Party staffers.
His secret application was due to be heard on the day Mr Drumgold announced the retrial would be scrapped.
Notwithstanding that decision, its contents remain to this day the subject of a non-publication order.
On Monday, the Chief Justice revealed her reasons for maintaining the order included her own fears for Ms Higgins.
"I have no doubt that any further exacerbation of the level of media attention directed to her carries a risk to her life," she said in the newly published December judgement.
"My view on that issue is not altered by the fact that [Ms Higgins] herself has made press statements.
"I do not think that indicates that one can compartmentalise the areas in which she is vulnerable and the areas in which she is not.
"I am simply not prepared to contribute to the media frenzy that has been this case."
It was Chief Justice McCallum's "firm view" that publication of the material in Mr Lehrmann's application, and a supporting affidavit, would give media "a new story or a new slant" on the case.
"[This] would inevitably result in further harm to [Ms Higgins], and that is not a step I am prepared to take," she said in the judgement.
