In the spotlight ... Michael Harmer.
TEN days before his allegations of sexual harassment against Peter Slipper sent a shockwave through the Australian political landscape, James Ashby was in a News Ltd-funded hotel room in Sydney. He was in ''lock down'', Ashby said in a text to a friend that day, April 10 this year.
Having told Slipper, then the speaker in the Federal Parliament, that he was suffering from a bladder infection and needed two weeks' sick leave, the political adviser made the secret trip to Sydney to carry out the final stage of what a Federal Court judge described this week as a ''political attack''. There had been weeks of planning with a fellow Slipper staffer, Karen Doane, and a series of phone calls and text messages with the journalist Steve Lewis, the Sydney firm Harmers Workplace Lawyers, and the Howard government minister Mal Brough, who - after five years in the political wilderness - has become the Liberal candidate for Slipper's seat of Fisher in Queensland.
''Lots happening,'' Ashby said in another text. ''Just a quick note to say it's all about to erupt.'' He added: ''Stories likely to start coming out in Thursday's paper. Sexual harassment case likely to come out next week. Legal team meeting me in Sydney at 8pm pro bono.''
Harmer's preferred media strategist ... Anthony McClellan.
This would be no ordinary sexual harassment case. Rather, while throwing out Ashby's claim on Wednesday, Justice Steven Rares found his text messages suggested an attempt - in ''combination'' with Brough - to bring down Slipper and change the balance of power in the House of Representatives; that is, to change the government.
Headline-grabbing sexual harassment cases have become the stock-in-trade for Ashby's lawyer, Michael Harmer. Take Harmer's David Jones and PricewaterhouseCoopers cases before Ashby. In all three cases, Harmer used his preferred media strategist, the former 60 Minutes producer Anthony McClellan, of AMC Media.
Harmer and McClellan worked together on Christina Rich's $11 million suit against PwC and Kristy Fraser-Kirk's $37 million punitive damages claim against David Jones and its former chief Mark McInnes. Both settled out of court, Rich for an estimated $5 million, Fraser-Kirk for a reported $850,000.
Now living in Singapore, Fraser-Kirk told Fairfax Media that Harmer was ''superhuman'' and ''the most honest and sincere person that you will ever meet''. He and McClellan ''dedicate a lot of their time to people who are less fortunate than they are and in circumstances that would bring most crumbling to their knees''.
Justice Rares did not find against McClellan, but his scathing judgment of Harmer might yet bring the lawyer to his knees. A complaint to the Legal Services Commissioner is likely, from the federal Attorney-General if not the judge.
By including ''gratuitous and scandalous'' details in the Ashby claim - allegations that Slipper abused his Cabcharge and had sex with a young male staff member - Justice Rares said Harmer breached his professional obligations. It was ''calculated to embarrass, demean and humiliate''. The judge in the David Jones case was similarly unimpressed with an attempt to include allegations of harassment, by anonymous women, against McInnes.
Fraser-Kirk's explosive statement of claim was timed for maximum effect, lodged the day before the DJs' spring-summer fashion launch. McClellan called Sydney journalists to tell them the court papers were to be lodged.
In the Ashby case, a journalist from The Daily Telegraph sought and obtained access to the statement of claim on the day it was filed, April 20. Slipper, in the US, was yet to be informed. Justice Rares found that Ashby or Karen Doane provided their employer's itinerary to the media so they could meet him at airports. McClellan was hired to manage Ashby's contact with the media on April 12, eight days before the documents were lodged, but there is no evidence he or Harmer were involved in tipping off the media.
During the case, Slipper's barrister, Ian Neil, SC, said Harmers ''used the media brilliantly to apply the blowtorch''. The Commonwealth felt the blowtorch enough to pay Ashby $50,000 in compensation over the Slipper matter. But does the media blowtorch help the process of justice? McClellan told Fairfax Media: ''Clients engage media advisers simply because, in high-profile cases, the demands of the media for access and information are voracious. It is an absolute media firestorm. No client, without professional help, could deal with the media demands. Those clients need protection and that's what we give them.''
McClellan said Harmers were not part of any political campaign but were ''simply acting as Mr Ashby's lawyers, allowing him to exercise his legal rights''.
McClellan took on the case on a no win/no fee basis. ''I have not been paid,'' he confirmed.
Michael Harmer is seriously out of pocket, too. ''Harmers takes on some cases at its own expense where individuals who could not otherwise access justice because of the extraordinary costs involved are then able to do so,'' McClellan said.
The media adviser, in defending his role, has previously argued there is ''no point winning the court battle and losing the reputational war''. In this category, Harmer is the big loser. He's lost the court battle … and Justice Rares has put the blowtorch to his reputation.
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