The woman who objected to Christian Porter’s choice of legal representation in a defamation case against the ABC “wishes him ill”, a court has been told.
Jo Dyer launched Federal Court action last year which resulted in top defamation barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC being banned from representing Mr Porter in his case against the ABC.
The former attorney-general and the ABC have since reached a settlement.
However, he and Ms Chrysanthou launched an appeal to overturn the court’s decision which resulted in the pair being ordered to pay $430k in costs.
The court has previously heard Ms Dyer, the former Sydney Writers’ Festival CEO, spoke to Ms Chrystanthou in November 2020.
The conversation took place after the ABC broadcast a Four Corners episode featuring Ms Dyer discussing her time with Mr Porter at university in the 1980s.
Three months later the ABC published a story online which referred to an unnamed cabinet minister being accused of rape.
The minister was later revealed to be Christian Porter and he has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Ms Dyer was friends with the woman who claimed she was raped.
The woman declined to be interviewed by police and took her own life before the Four Corners episode went to air.
The court has heard in between the Four Corners episode airing and the ABC online story being published, Ms Dyer and Ms Chrystanthou met to discuss an article Ms Dyer did not approve of in The Australian.
Ms Chrystanthou says the meeting lasted less than an hour and in March 2021 Christian Porter asked her to represent him in his case against the ABC.
Ms Dyer feared Ms Chrystanthou would use “confidential information” from their discussion to help Mr Porter win his defamation case.
Last year, Justice Tom Thawley found there was a danger of misuse of confidential information received by Ms Chrystanthou.
During an appeal hearing on Wednesday, Mr Porter’s barrister Bret Walker SC argued the information about allegations against Mr Porter was no longer confidential and Ms Dwyer did not want them to remain confidential when she met Ms Chrystanthou.
“They were not intended by her to be kept confidential,” Mr Walker said.
“The very opposite.
“Mr Porter is obviously somebody to whom [Ms Dyer] has exhibited a high level of disapproval, [she] wishes him ill, to put it bluntly.”
Before the court was closed to the public for the remainder of Mr Walker’s address, he said he did not agree with the move.
“I also resist the notion that these proceedings should be in closed court, this is not national security,” Mr Walker said.
Ms Dyer’s barrister Michael Hodge QC said Justice Thawley rejected the suggestion Justice Thawley erred in handling of the case.
“It’s not about the idea that there’s a duty of loyalty owed by a lawyer to a client, free from anything else,” he said of the case.
“It’s about the proposition that the lawyer owes a duty of confidentiality to the client and the client has an interest in seeking to protect and enforce that duty of confidentiality.”
Mr Hodge said it was against a person’s interest to be put in a position where there was a risk their lawyer could use information previously privately exchanged “for the benefit of somebody else without consent”.
After having previously tried to gain Labor preselection, Ms Dyer is now contesting the marginal Liberal-held South Australian seat of Boothby as an independent candidate in the upcoming federal election.
Mr Porter has quit politics and is returnxjmtzywing to work as a lawyer in Western Australia.
Neither appeared in court.
A decision on the appeal outcome has been reserved by the court.
