In a dramatic about-face, the ACT's top prosecutor has told an inquiry he was mistaken to suspect political interference in the investigation of former Liberal Party adviser Bruce Lehrmann.
Shane Drumgold, the ACT Director of Public Prosecutions, is facing a fourth day of questioning in the board of inquiry into how Mr Lehrmann's case was handled.
Mr Lehrmann was accused of raping his then colleague Brittany Higgins in a parliamentary office in 2019, though his trial was abandoned late last year.
He maintains his innocence and there have been no findings against him.
Mr Drumgold made the allegation of political interference in a letter to ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan, which sparked the inquiry.
Yesterday, Mr Drumgold repeated his suspicion that ACT detectives investigating the alleged rape were under pressure from a federal government minister to "make the matter go away".
He later singled out Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, whom Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann worked for at the time of the alleged assault.
Mr Drumgold said Senator Reynolds's engagement with the case and the "passion" he said police showed for Mr Lehrmann to be acquitted led him to consider the prospect of outside influence.
However, he told the inquiry today that the concerns he had with the police's conduct were "most likely a skills deficit", after he reviewed the officers' statements to the inquiry.
"Your suspicions about the existence of political interference to prevent the case properly going ahead were mistaken?" inquiry chair Walter Sofronoff asked.
"I do accept that," Mr Drumgold replied.
The prosecutor said it was the "cumulative effect" of various issues and the "unknown behind [all] that" that led to his view.
"The statements I have read have given me the known [reasons] behind that," he said.
Mr Drumgold's counsel, Mark Tedeschi, asked Mr Drumgold if his suspicions had been allayed, to which he replied: "Yes, they have been."
In Parliament today, Senator Reynolds responded to Mr Drumgold's suggestion she might had interfered with the police investigation.
"This baseless suggestion was without any, any foundation," she said.
"It should never, ever have come to this.
"It is baffling and it is disturbing that this view was offered under oath yesterday."
Police had 'outdated' approach to sexual offences: Drumgold
Mr Drumgold also discussed the police's decision to serve their brief of evidence directly to defence lawyers, rather than going through the DPP's office.
He said that, at the time, he felt it was a deliberate attempt to disrupt the prosecution, but his view had changed.
"My current view is that it was probably just a mess-up."
But Mr Drumgold remained firm in his view that some police officers had an outdated approach to prosecuting sexual offences; they believed complainants behaved in a "standard way".
"Their analysis of evidence in documents like the Moller report displayed stereotype analysis of a way that a complainant will behave," he said.
"For example, [they believed] a genuine complainant would never go to the media, a genuine complainant would run off and report it, or would tell everybody immediately."
The cross-examination of Mr Drumgold continues.
