The ACT's former top prosecutor is calling for the ACT government to redact parts of a scathing report, recently found by a court to have been affected by apprehended bias.
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The 839-page board of inquiry report, authored by chairman Walter Sofronoff KC, examined the now-dropped prosecution of Bruce Lehrmann, who has always denied raping fellow former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins at Parliament House in 2019.
Former director of public prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC has also claimed "extensive" media reporting on findings critical of his conduct, before he had seen the document himself, forced him to resign early.
Mr Drumgold resigned in August last year after being slammed in the report, with ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury saying the latter's position was "no longer tenable".
The inquiry's findings were sensationally published by The Australian shortly beforehand after Mr Sofronoff provided the "embargoed" document to a journalist ahead of time.
"This reporting ultimately resulted in my premature departure as director of public prosecutions before I could seek judicial review," Mr Drumgold said in a statement shared with The Canberra Times.
He also claimed he was unable to seek a temporary injunction against the public release of sections of the report until after such a review.
"Even though the harm has been done, I had hoped that responsible government would have corrected this, by immediately redacting the publication of the adverse findings and comments against me in chapters 4, 5 and 6 of the Sofronoff report," Mr Drumgold said.
"However, this has not happened."
The three chapters, about 122 pages in total, contain findings about the prosecution, the trial and the aftermath of the mistrial.
The ABC, on Wednesday morning, first reported that Mr Drumgold had sent a letter to Mr Rattenbury questioning the basis for how the government decided his position was untenable, given the recent court ruling.
In a statement to The Canberra Times on Wednesday evening, a spokesperson from Mr Rattenbury's office said they had not received a request from Mr Drumgold for the redaction of any part of the report.
"As the report is now a government record there is no proper basis to redact any part of its contents," they stated.
On Tuesday last week, Mr Rattenbury said the recent court findings did not alter the ACT government's view that Mr Drumgold's position was "untenable".
"These findings do not change that," Mr Rattenbury said.
"Through the course of the board of inquiry, we saw Mr Drumgold retract a series of statements that he made.
"He changed his view on a number of matters."
Last week, acting Justice Stephen Kaye found the inquiry report author's relationship with columnist Janet Albrechtsen, from The Australian, gave rise to a reasonable apprehension of bias.
The judge also ruled that a board of inquiry finding that Mr Drumgold had engaged in "grossly unethical conduct" in his treatment of Senator Linda Reynolds was legally unreasonable.
However, seven of Mr Drumgold's other claims of legal unreasonableness were not upheld.
Acting Justice Kaye found Mr Sofronoff had failed to afford Mr Drumgold natural justice concerning the release of a letter to the chief police officer under freedom of information laws.
The court did not uphold two other allegations of the report author failing to provide natural justice.
Mr Drumgold had previously launched legal action seeking parts of the report be quashed or, alternatively, the conclusions made in relation to him be declared invalid, or affected by bias, or a denial of natural justice.
The report's findings of misconduct in relation to Mr Drumgold include that he knowingly lied to a judge and "preyed on" the inexperience of a junior prosecutor while dishonestly withholding documents from Mr Lehrmann's lawyers.
Mr Sofronoff also found Mr Drumgold at times "lost objectivity and did not act with fairness and detachment as was required by his role" during the trial.
