Opposition denied grilling in Ashby case

THE opposition has been denied the opportunity to grill some of the government lawyers involved in James Ashby's case against the commonwealth.

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis wanted to question in a senate estimates committee on Tuesday some of the 17 Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) lawyers directly involved in the case.

But Ian Govey, AGS chief executive, refused, citing a principle established by former coalition government attorney-general Daryl Williams.

"What is in issue is the way in which the Australian government solicitor has conducted this litigation and the competency with which it has conducted the litigation," Senator Brandis said.

The case in question was Mr Ashby's Federal Court proceedings launched in April against both the commonwealth and former Speaker Peter Slipper.

He alleged he had been sexually harassed by Mr Slipper while working in the Speaker's office.

Text messages sent by Mr Slipper formed the key part of his case, which lawyers from the AGS office supplied in early June with a CD spreadsheet of all 15,400 text messages from Mr Ashby's iPhone.

Despite lodging an application in mid June to have the case struck out as an abuse of process, the commonwealth later opted to settle with Mr Ashby, paying him $50,000 compensation.

Mr Brandis asked why the commonwealth made the application without properly considering all 15,400 text messages they had retrieved from Mr Ashby's phone.

"This application to terminate Mr Ashby's proceedings, strangle them at birth as it were ... the most radical application that can be made in civil proceedings was done on an incomplete view of the evidence and apparently an incomplete understanding of the evidence as well," he told the Senate estimates committee.

Attorney-General's department legal services group head David Fredericks said there were so many texts he did not have full knowledge of all of them by the time the application was made.

"But certainly in view of council and in view of AGS, there was sufficient knowledge of text messages to support the abuse of process application that was brought," he said.

Mr Govey defended the decision to settle with Mr Ashby, saying the threshold requirement was the existence of at least a meaningful prospect of liability being established.

"Legal advice had been given that this requirement had been met," he said, adding that this did not mean the claim had to be strong or likely to succeed.

Mr Govey said the AGS had to take into account the costs of continuing the action in determining the settlement sum.

Among those costs was the $4800 per day paid to the commonwealth's legal counsel, eminent lawyer Julian Burnside.

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