ABC star Annabel Crabb’s private texts to a friend of Christian Porter’s rape accuser have been released by a court in a surprise twist in the legal saga.
In the messages, Crabb speaks candidly to Jo Dyer about the allegations their school friend, an Adelaide woman known only as Kate, made about the Attorney-General before she died in June 2020.
The Kitchen Cabinet host and star political writer, 48, admitted she was left with a ‘boiling sense of rage and grief’ when she learned about the claims – and was scathing about the senior Cabinet minister.
‘What a strange dude CP (Christian Porter) is,’ Crabb wrote. ‘And how amazingly arrogant to think you can mistreat people and get away with it forever.’
Crabb said she felt ‘completely poleaxed’ about the matter given an inquiry’s recent findings about High Court judge Dyson Heydon sexually harassing female associates.
The texts reveal the ABC journalist even offered up her house for Ms Dyer to be interviewed by Four Corners journalist Louise Milligan.
ABC star Annabel Crabb’s text messages to her friend Jo Dyer – a close mate of Christian Porter’s late accuser ‘Kate’ – have come to light in a Federal Court judgement
Text messages between Crabb (in grey) and Ms Dyer (blue). Crabb says: ‘What a strange dude CP is. And how amazingly arrogant to think you can mistreat people and get away with it forever’
When Ms Dyer tried to organise a tribute to Kate, Crabb outlined her busy itinerary of events in Byron Bay and Canberra, before quipping: ‘Are you at my house btw?’
Ms Dyer replied: ‘Heading to your house at 11am, which will feel slightly odd in your absence!’
Jo Dyer, the close friend of Porter’s accuser Kate, filmed an interview with the ABC and Crabb’s house
Ms Dyer later opened up to Crabb that the interview with Milligan was a ‘very intense experience … longer and more involved than I expected’.
When Ms Dyer expressed doubt that the information she provided was as detailed as Milligan would have hoped, Crabb reassured her friend she had been told ‘Jo was amazing’.
Ms Dyer said she hoped other witnesses could provide a definitive timeline of Porter’s alleged encounter with Kate.
She noted that the stakes were high, before joking that the interview had at least made her look as if she had a ‘more impressive house’.
Crabb replied: ‘I bet Kate would be extremely moved to know how much you’re all doing to get some justice for her xx’.
The pair also had a candid chat about The Australian’s columnist Janet Albrechtsen, and a piece she had apparently written about ousted Labor MP Emma Husar.
Ms Dyer had a less than favourable view: ‘What a f***wit”, she said, according to the court documents.
In this message exchange, Crabb reveals she spoke to Communications Minister Paul Fletcher about ‘Kate’. ‘He responded to the news a bit unreadably,’ she recalled
Further messages in October where Ms Dyer (at the end) describes The Australian’s opinion columnist Janet Albrechtsen in unflattering terms
The ABC paid Christian Porter’s legal team $100,000 in ‘mediation and related costs’, a parliamentary inquiry heard
Part of Ms Dyer’s interview was aired last year as part of the Four Corners program ‘Inside the Canberra Bubble’, which did not air the rape claim against Porter.
That came to light in February when Ms Milligan published an article online claiming an unnamed minister allegedly raped a teenage girl during a 1988 debating trip to Sydney.
Mr Porter outed himself as the man accused days later at an emotional press conference.
He insisted that the alleged sexual assault ‘just didn’t happen’, and then sued the ABC for defamation in the Federal Court.
The parties settled last month, with the ABC amending its article to say it ‘regretted’ its article could be misinterpreted as an accusation of guilt against the Cabinet minister.
Crabb’s messages were handed to the Federal Court as evidence in Ms Dyer’s lawsuit against Porter’s chosen barrister, Sue Chrysanthou.
The case ended in Ms Chrystanthou being restrained from representing Porter in the defamation case.
The Australian newspaper was first to report on the messages. Crabb told the publication she was surprised her texts had come to light in court documents, given her ‘personal irrelevance’ to any of the issues in the case involving Ms Dyer and Ms Chrysanthou.
Ms Dyer slammed Mr Porter and his ‘henchmen’ at the (newspaper) for what she called ‘conspiracy-laden spin’. Thursday was the one year anniversary of Kate’s death.