Lisa Wilkinson uttered five defiant words as she took her seat in the witness box at the Bruce Lehrmann trial

Sue Crisantou stood up in Court 22A of the Federal Court at 10:29 a.m. Thursday and uttered the words that eager observers had been waiting to hear since late November.

“Your Honor, I’m calling Lisa Wilkinson,” the lawyer said as her client stood from the same front-row seat she had occupied since the start of Bruce Lerman’s libel trial.

Wilkinson wore a peach trouser suit and wore an Order of Australia cufflink attached to the left lapel of her double-breasted jacket.

She chose to accept the affirmation rather than swear on the Bible, and emphasized the last parts of the familiar old promise to tell the whole truth “and nothing except, That Truth.’

As Wilkinson sat down in the witness box, she poured a glass of water from a jug. She may have immediately regretted the decision when Judge Michael Lee said he would take a morning tea break at 11.45am.

“I’ll just try not to drink too much water,” she joked.

It so happened that the first break started five minutes early, and Wilkinson quickly went to the toilet. “I think there will be a line,” she said as she left the room.

This created a problem for Chrysanthou, who was unable to speak to her client during cross-examination and senior counsel did not want to be kept with Wilkinson in the only women’s section on the floor.

It was the 16th day of hearings in Lerman’s libel suit, in which he is suing Wilkinson and Network Ten over a February 2021 interview with The Project.

In this interview, former political staffer Brittany Higgins said she was raped by a colleague on a couch in Senator Linda Reynolds’ office in March 2019.

Higgins and Wilkinson did not name Lehrmann, who always had sexual contact with her, but he claims he was easily identified.

Lehrmann was later charged with raping Higgins, but his trial in the ACT Supreme Court was abandoned in October last year due to jury misconduct.

That trial was delayed for three months after Wilkinson gave a controversial speech at the 2022 Logies, where she won a statuette for most outstanding news or public affairs reporting in recognition of the Higgins interview.

Wilkinson cannot prove whether rape occurred or not, but gives evidence showing that she did everything she could to prove Higgins was telling the truth before The Project interview aired.

All she was required to do was give her full name (Lisa Claire Wilkinson) and Chrysanthou’s occupation before Lerman’s lawyer Matthew Richardson (SK) took over.

Richardson began walking Wilkinson through an affidavit in which she wrote that after her first meeting with Higgins in January 2021, she tried to confirm everything the young woman had told her.

Wilkinson remained calm and confident throughout much of her evidence as Richardson suggested there were inconsistencies in Higgins’ version of what happened at Parliament House.

The witness acknowledged that she “developed, conducted and presented” the story that ultimately aired on “The Project.”

Wilkinson told the court that despite starting her media career in 1978, she had never had any real training in contempt laws or the concept of sub judice.

Richardson then performed Wilkinson Logis’ acceptance speech, which was delivered eight days before Lehrmann’s trial began.

“Brittany Higgins was a political problem,” Wilkinson said. “And governments usually like it when political problems go away. But Brittany didn’t.

“And the truth is that this honor belongs to Brittany. This is a credit to the 26-year-old woman’s unwavering courage.

“It belongs to a woman who said enough is enough.” It belongs to the woman who inspired more than 100,000 thousand similarly tortured women and men to take to the streets across the country and scream in numbers too great to ignore.

“Brittany, thank you for trusting me.

“Thank you for helping change the national conversation. And on behalf of all future generations of women, thank you, Brittany, for never giving up.”

Richardson wanted to know whether Wilkinson believed the speech was telling the hundreds of thousands of viewers watching that all of Higgins’ statements were true.

Wilkinson responded that this is not what she said in her speech and she does not have a “superpower” to penetrate the audience’s mind.

The audience for Wilkinson’s testimony Thursday was the largest in more than a year. She left the project in November 2022, accusing some media of “purposeful toxicity.”

Almost 20,000 members of the public watched her evidence on the Federal Court’s YouTube channel shortly before lunch.

At one point, Wilkinson apologized to anyone listening for her graphic description of what Higgins told her about the alleged rape in Senator Reynolds’ office.

She also expressed regret when Richardson read a transcript of the recording in which she called Reynolds “that damn woman.”

“I apologize for the profanity,” Wilkinson told the court and viewers watching at home.

Richardson told Wilkinson she was more concerned with ratings than investigating the truth of Higgins’ claims when her interview aired on The Project.

Wilkinson agreed with Richardson that she was “fully committed to supporting Ms Higgins” but denied that she was not interested in having her history scrutinized.

Richardson: “You were delighted with the compelling commercial story she told.”

Wilkinson didn’t like that line at all and she paused for a moment before raising her voice to respond.

“Please don’t make me look like a cheap tabloid journalist, Mr. Richardson,” the former Today host and Dolly and Cleo editor said.

Wilkinson denied that her speech at Logis was “reckless and reckless” or that she put her “pride and ego” above Lehrmann’s right to a fair trial.

In further evidence, Wilkinson was asked why the Project did not show the full contents of a text sent to Higgins by Reynolds’ chief of staff, Fiona Brown, days after the alleged sexual assault.

Missing from the text about the meeting to discuss what happened was Brown telling Higgins she could bring her father for support.

“The thing about prime-time television remains that viewers have short attention spans,” Wilkinson said, explaining that it’s easier to deliver shorter messages.

Sometimes Wilkinson risked giving mini-lectures or sermons. At least twice Judge Michael Lee had to ask Wilkinson to limit herself to answering questions.

On several occasions, Wilkinson seemed offended when Richardson questioned her professionalism as a journalist.

Asked whether inconsistencies in Higgins’ statements meant her account might be unreliable, Wilkinson told Richardson: “Maybe I’m just more determined than you to read between the lines.”

“I read between the lines,” she said at another point. “That’s what we journalists tend to do.”

On several occasions, Wilkinson told the barrister, whose father was former Labor strongman and Keating government minister Graham Richardson, that she also understood the “vagaries” of politics.

“I know how politics works, Mr. Richardson,” she told her interlocutor.

After lunch, Lehrmann moved from his usual seat in the front row of the gallery and took a position next to his legal team at the bar table.

In the final session of the day, Richardson quoted the opening lines of the episode of The Project that featured Higgins’ interview: “A young woman forced to choose between her career and her pursuit of justice.”

Wilkinson was able to quote these words perfectly, without referring to the notes, almost three years after the program was broadcast.

Throughout her testimony, Wilkinson consistently denied overlooking the alleged problems with Higgins’ story and said she did everything she could to get to the truth.

“I think we investigated this story very well, Mr. Richardson,” she said.

Wilkinson will return to testify on Friday.