7 hours ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Christian Porter joins legal conference with disgraced judge
CBD has been keeping a close eye of late on the legal profession's slow but shocking re-embrace of disgraced former High Court judge Dyson Heydon, who was found by an independent court inquiry to have sexually harassed six female associates.
We revealed last month that Heydon will be one of the guest speakers at conservative legal group the Samuel Griffith Society's upcoming national conference in Perth, part of a book tour of sorts for the ex-judge's new self-published contract law tome that is proving a bit of a hit on Phillip Street.
Now, the conference has added another legal figure to its lineup – none other than former Attorney-General Christian Porter, who was the nation's first law officer when the allegations against Heydon were made public in 2020.
Porter subsequently ordered his department to undertake an internal investigation into Heydon's time as the Abbott government's hand-picked trade union royal commissioner, which revealed further complaints against the former judge.
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By the time the report was released, Porter was subject of a historical rape allegation, which he has always strenuously denied. Porter later quit cabinet, and then politics altogether following his decision to use anonymous donors to fund an aborted defamation action against the ABC over those allegations.
Porter's successor, Michaelia Cash, would later announce a historic six-figure settlement between the Commonwealth and three of the women harassed by Heydon. Until the release of his book this year, the former judge has been largely invisible.
Porter, once described as a 'future prime minister', has made a steady return to public life in his home state of Western Australia, where he's working as a barrister with an increasingly high-profile caseload. He was recently defence counsel for one of two men found guilty of murdering Indigenous schoolboy Cassius Turvey.
He's also just joined the board of the Western Australian Cricket Association – his first public role since quitting politics – and was spotted by CBD at former opposition leader Peter Dutton's election night wake in Brisbane last month, just to support a mate.
