Bruce Lehrmann's claim phone call recordings were 'illegally obtained' in Toowoomba rape case dismissed
Mr Lehrmann is facing two counts of rape which are alleged to have occurred in Toowoomba in October 2021.
He was not present in the Toowoomba District Court for a pre-trial hearing on Friday where his Sydney-based lawyer Zali Burrows appeared on his behalf.
Ms Burrows's application for a "declaration that intercepted phone calls between the 30-year-old's lawyers and Queensland Police Service (QPS) [were] illegally obtained" was due to be heard in the court today.
But within 40 minutes of the hearing getting underway, Ms Burrows withdrew the claim, which was then formally dismissed by order of Judge Benedict Power.
The defence application related initially to four telephone conversations — two between a police officer and Mr Lehrmann's former lawyers and two between a police officer and legal receptionist.
Ms Burrows's decision to withdraw the application came after Judge Benedict Power put a set of propositions to her including that it was quite usual for police and defence lawyers to discuss a matter.
Ms Burrows agreed with all of his points.
She also agreed there might be circumstances in which a defence lawyer may unknowingly breach legal privilege in such a conversation.
Judge Power asked Ms Burrows if she agreed that to succeed in her application, the recording of the conversation must be illegal under either Queensland or federal law -- which it is not.
Ms Burrows replied that in future she would not enter into any phone conversations with any Queensland officers and would confine all communication to writing.
Judge Power asked Ms Burrows whether she no longer wished to press her claim.
"Yes, Your Honour … I will simply refuse to speak to police on the phone and confine it to writing," Ms Burrows replied.
The Sydney-based lawyer repeated this outside court, telling reporters: "All I can say is it's another world in the state of Queensland. "
Ms Burrows denied it had been a legal tactic.
"It wasn't a legal move, but can I just say we got some very important material today received on return of subpoena which will certainly support our stay application."
In court, Ms Burrows also told Judge Power that her client was yet to decide whether to pursue a jury or judge-alone trial.
"Mr Lehrmann has not made a decision yet," Ms Burrows said.
Judge Power urged Ms Burrows and the parties to move to set a trial date for the matter.
But before that can occur there are more hearings related to defence applications to receive unredacted versions of police notebooks and diary entries and from the forensic download of the complainant's mobile phone.
Mr Lehrmann will also pursue a permanent stay of the charges against him when the matter returns to court next month.
The case has been before the Toowoomba District Court on numerous occasions amid wrangling between the Crown and defence over disclosure of the police brief of evidence against Mr Lehrmann.
He has not yet been required to formally enter a plea to the indictment, but it is understood he will defend the charges.
The matter returns to court for mention on July 31 and for a hearing on August 28.
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Ross Buckley: Stable coins are digital currencies that are tied to real currency, to government currency. So what the Genius Act says is that banks and other entities can issue their own private digital currency as long as it's fully backed up by US dollars on deposit or by short-term US treasuries or other unimpeachable financial securities. So stable coins, I think, will change the world, and they will be important for Australia in time because if you look at Australia's financial system, our retail payments within the country work extremely well. International payments don't. International payments are slow, they're expensive. If you're engaged in international trade, given the modern world, they use a technology that is centuries and centuries old. Stable coins are perfectly adapted for international trade. So rather than making international payments by the Australian bank contacting the New York bank, which contacts the bank somewhere else, where they all take a little clip out of the ticket, and eventually the transaction happens between Australia and another country, stable coins are digital tokens. They can be sent directly. Payments that today may take two or three days and cost one or two percent will cost one or two hundredths of a percent and happen in a few minutes. Sam Hawley: So if, hang on, so if I went and bought a stable coin, say, worth a dollar, the issuer that gave me that stable coin would have to keep a dollar in reserve. Ross Buckley: You've got it. Sam Hawley: Is that how it works? Ross Buckley: Yep, and it would get, under the Genius Act, it will get audited every month and the regulator will make sure that there is a dollar in a trust account in a bank backing up that stable coin. Sam Hawley: Right, so then if I want to cash in my dollar, I can get paid immediately? Ross Buckley: Yes, you can. And you might say, well, how is that different to digital money now? Is that this is a tokenized form of money. So this token can be sent abroad. This token will work well on blockchains and distributed ledgers and with, in all the sort of plumbing of the system that is being developed. So rather than something happening in the software and then having to step outside the software into the banking system to make the payment, this will run on the same software. So it's very much more efficient. Sam Hawley: But it's still a cryptocurrency, right? But it's just, well, it's less volatile. Ross Buckley: It's rather like a cryptocurrency. It uses all the same technology, but it should not, if it's well done, it shouldn't be volatile at all. It shouldn't be any more volatile than the Australian dollar because it will be a digital expression of the Australian dollar or in this case, the US dollar. Sam Hawley: OK, so how widespread could these stable coins become? Ross Buckley: Well, they're best thought of as just a digital expression of the currency of the country, which is why every other country, including Australia, thinks the best way to create them is as central bank digital currencies, because issuing money is a core sovereign function. You know, paper notes are going out of use. These are just digital versions of paper notes. So logically, you'd think they'd be issued by the entity that issues the paper notes, namely the nation's central bank. But that doesn't fit well with the American ethos. So this trio of acts, the Genius Act promotes stable coins. The Anti-CBDC Act says we will never have the central bank issue this currency, this digital currency. Sam Hawley: And why is that? Ross Buckley: You'd have to ask Americans, wouldn't you? It's a profoundly different culture. They don't trust the government. They're very worried about the privacy imposing potential of a CBDC that government could look into the transactions you're making. But of course, it's easy to develop a CBDC. So the government can't see inside what's happening. That's what the Bank of England is doing with its CBDC. It'll be able to see when you buy them, when you redeem them, but it won't be able to see the transactions you're making at all. And strangely, nobody seems to mind that MasterCard and Visa sees everything we buy on the current system, right? That doesn't seem to bother Americans, but the US government potentially, because the government will promise not to look and it will build in technological solutions to prevent it looking, but Americans don't trust their own government. That's part of it. Sam Hawley: All right, but there are big companies, aren't there, like Amazon and Walmart, that are pretty keen to jump on this? Ross Buckley: Well, if you are an Amazon or a Walmart, at the moment you're looking at those fees, those surcharges, right, which looks like Australia is going to prohibit the separate charging of. The bill for credit card surcharges for Walmart or Amazon, which are much higher than they are in Australia, by the way, in the US, is huge. So if they create their own stable coins, they can create their own payment mechanism and basically sideline Visa and MasterCard altogether. Sam Hawley: Wow, OK. All right, so Ross, Crypto Week was pretty significant in the United States. We're seeing this legislation aiming to integrate cryptocurrencies into financial markets. That's right. But what about here in Australia? Is something similar being considered at all? Ross Buckley: I don't know. I'd be surprised if Australian regulators went in that way because of the potential for a huge bust. And a lot of people losing a lot of money. In some ways, Australia, I think, clearly will respond. The Australian banks will have to respond with their own stable coins to facilitate cheap, efficient international payments by Australian corporations. And if that's done well, that should be absolutely fine. I'd be absolutely gobsmacked if we ever passed a piece of legislation saying we can't issue a central bank digital currency. That would be nutso in my humble view. So I don't think we'll ever have anything quite like the Crypto Week that the Americans have had. But on these issues, we're a profoundly different people. Sam Hawley: Yeah, sure, but could the RBA, for instance, could it be in the future that it is issuing things like stable coins? Ross Buckley: It would issue a central bank digital currency because it's a central bank. And it's been working on this for a few years. It had a very good project two years ago exploring use cases on this. And it's got one going at the moment, Project Acacia, which is looking more broadly to examine how you could use central bank digital currency to pay for tokenised real-world assets. So tokenised money being exchanged for tokenised assets. So the RBA's doing a lot of work on it, some internationally leading work on it, yes. Sam Hawley: OK, all right. Well, of course, Ross, some of us have dabbled in cryptocurrency. A lot of us have not. But does this all mean that perhaps it will become more accessible and more widespread, or do you think, really, it's just the same and it's just too risky? Ross Buckley: The stable coin stuff will change the rails upon which international payments and probably wholesale capital markets payments in Australia in time move. But that won't be something that the average person will really notice. You know, the same way you pay on Osco on your phone, you don't really deal with, you know, just transfer some money to a friend. You don't worry about how all that happens. It just works, right? The stable coin thing will be a revolution of payment rails and will really make a difference. But the cryptocurrency itself, Bitcoin type of stuff, that's every individual's personal choice. The actual cryptocurrency, I think, at these prices is extremely risky. Sam Hawley: Ross Buckley is a Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales. He's also a member of the Payments System Board at the Reserve Bank. This episode was produced by Sydney Pead. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sam Hawley. Thanks for listening.
