Bruce Lehrmann has slammed the ABC's decision to televise a Brittany Higgins speech, accusing the network of acting with recklessness "so extreme it amounted to wilful blindness and constituted malice".
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He makes the claim in submissions his solicitor has filed in the Federal Court, where Mr Lehrmann is suing the ABC over its live coverage of Ms Higgins addressing the National Press Club last year.
Mr Lehrmann has always denied raping Ms Higgins at Parliament House in 2019, when the pair worked for Liberal senator Linda Reynolds.
His trial was aborted because of juror misconduct, with the charge levelled at him later discontinued.
Ms Higgins' press club speech occurred while Mr Lehrmann was awaiting his ACT Supreme Court trial.
As such, Mr Lehrmann launched civil action against the ABC on the basis of an allegation the network's live broadcast amounted to "a contemptuous attempt to prejudice the jury".
The ABC denied that claim in defence documents filed last month, when it outlined numerous defences.
These included assertions the ABC could not have known what Ms Higgins would say, and that its coverage of the speech was a fair report of public significance.
The ABC also denied the broadcast was about Mr Lehrmann.
In reply submissions released by the court on Monday, Mr Lehrmann's lawyers outlined the various public comments Ms Higgins had made prior to giving the televised address.
Solicitor Paul Svilans and barrister Matthew Richardson SC said these statements had made it "quite inevitable" Ms Higgins would repeat her allegation that she had been sexually assaulted by a colleague at Parliament House.
They also noted that while Ms Higgins did not name Mr Lehrmann, his identity had been revealed in the media before the address.
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The lawyers went on to claim the ABC had made no attempt to check the truth of the allegation it had known would be published, including by contacting Mr Lehrmann and seeking his response.
They said failing to delay the broadcast to remove any problematic statements meant the ABC had been "recklessly indifferent, negligent and wilfully blind" to the likelihood Ms Higgins would say things that defamed Mr Lehrmann and prejudiced his right to a fair trial.
Speaking alongside sexual assault survivor Grace Tame, Ms Higgins began her address by claiming she had been raped on a couch in what she had thought was the most secure building in Australia.
Mr Lehrmann's lawyers alleged this claim being juxtaposed with the words of Ms Tame, "whose assailant had actually been convicted in a court", could only amount to "the overwhelming message that Ms Higgins' allegations were true".
"Indeed the whole point of the [National Press Club] address was that Ms Higgins was telling the truth and that cultural and other change ought to follow," they wrote in the submissions.
"The prejudicial publication to potential jurors in the criminal proceedings ... would have occurred irrespective of whether they knew Mr Lehrmann's identity."
Mr Svilans and Mr Richardson further claimed it could be inferred the ABC had, by broadcasting Ms Higgins' speech live in February 2022, "published that matter with the intention to hurt and harm" Mr Lehrmann.
Mr Lehrmann's case against the ABC has been listed for a case management hearing on Friday.
On that day, Justice Michael Lee will hold a similar hearing in relation to a separate defamation case Mr Lehrmann has brought against Network Ten and television host Lisa Wilkinson.
That matter is currently listed for trial in November.
It was due to be heard alongside cases against the publisher of news.com.au and the website's political editor, Samantha Maiden, but Mr Lehrmann reached a settlement with those parties last week.
Mr Lehrmann told 7News Spotlight, in an interview broadcast on Sunday evening, he had not ruled out also suing Ms Higgins.
