EXCLUSIVE Lisa Wilkinson launches astonishing public attack on 'three women' at Network Ten - as she reveals her surprise next career move
During a talk at a book festival in Taree, on the NSW mid-north-coast, on Friday night, the one-time co-host of The Project unleashed a fiery blast at her former bosses at Network Ten.
Addressing a dimly lit, half-full auditorium for $25-a-head, Wilkinson was asked by one attendee why women fail to support other women in media, leading the veteran TV and magazine journalist to reply: 'I would love to know'.
She then went on to slam a trio of unnamed women who 'run Channel Ten ' for allegedly failing to accept their share of the blame for her controversial 2022 Gold Logie victory speech.
That speech, where she praised Brittany Higgins ' courage, led to the delay of the trial of Bruce Lehrman n for allegedly raping Ms Higgins at Parliament House - leading Wilkinson to be widely pilloried.
'Three women who run Channel Ten all read that speech,' Wilkinson said.
'When s*** hit the fan I said: "I'm on the front page of every newspaper in the country right now, I am being destroyed.
'I will take some of the blame because I said those words, but they are the words you asked me to say.
'You (the Ten women) know the legal position I am in. You approved it. I went to the legal department .... three times, including up to the afternoon of the Logies before I got on that stage.
'You've got to take some of the blame.
'I was told: "Oh we couldn't do that. That will only make it worse".
'And as the weeks went on and I said: "This is getting worse, not for you, no-one's mentioned the role that any of you have played".
'And it was three women.'
Wilkinson did not refer to the three women she was speaking about by name.
However, in an affidavit to the Federal Court for Lehrmann's defamation trial against Ten, Wilkinson said she believed Ten's senior legal counsel Tasha Smithies, head of PR Cat Donovan and CEO Beverley McGarvey had 'reviewed and approved' her speech. Only Ms McGarvey is employed in a major executive role running Ten.
The extraordinary public blast is the first time outside court proceedings that Wilkinson has been critical of her former employer, which paid her $1.7million a year to co-host The Project - only for her to disappear off air on gardening leave for the final two years of her contract.
Lisa Wilkinson reveals her next job
Wilkinson started off her 'Evening With Lisa Wilkinson' event with a joke about the Logies saga.
'Before I begin, before anybody starts feeling a bit nervous, I have to confirm that I have had this speech legalled by my independent legal team, so don't anybody panic, least of all me,' she said.
She then trotted out her familiar working-class-girl-from-Sydney's-west-makes-good story, portrayed her downfall from network television as hardship suffered with dignity.
Asked by an audience member why she had not yet taken up a post at a public broadcaster - such as the ABC or SBS - Wilkinson answered that she was still in a form of legal limbo, despite Ten and her triumph over Lehrmann in their defamation case.
'I'm in a very interesting position at the moment. That's the most generic word I can come up with for the position I'm in,' she said.
'I don't know if you're aware that even though we've won the legal case - and the judge did declare that Bruce Lehrmann is a rapist - Bruce Lehrmann has appealed that finding.
'And so the case, the appeal, is back in court in August ... I don't know what's going to happen.'
She swatted down rumours of a foray into politics, claiming her time was instead being taken up by penning a biography on a woman whose life she sees as the 'greatest Australian story that has never been told'.
Wilkinson said the unnamed woman's story crossed her desk at her darkest hour in recent memory - the weekend after Channel Seven's Spotlight aired a tape of a pre-interview she had with Ms Higgins before she appeared on The Project.
Channel Seven's 'disgusting' edit
Wilkinson was clearly still upset by the network's portrayal of a five-hour meeting she had with Higgins and her now-husband David Sharaz.
'They completely twisted what was said, edited it in a way that was disgusting, that made it look like we were in a nightclub,' she claimed.
'It was all caught on tape because we were ordered by the courts to give them everything we had.
'And I'm an honest journalist. I'm not going to hide anything, you know, I want the truth to come out, but what Channel Seven did with it blew my mind, and for me, I couldn't see a way forward.'
The mum-of-three, who lives in Cremorne on Sydney's lower north shore, said she was unable to leave her palatial home for two weeks after the story aired.
Wilkinson said things got so bad her husband, Peter FitzSimons cancelled a work trip to be by her side.
'He was really worried about me, and he had good reason to be very worried about me,' she told the audience.
While she remained tight-lipped on her upcoming biography, the parallels with her efforts to bring Higgins' story out of the darkness were plain to see.
'When Australia learns about this woman and realises that her story has been buried, you're all going to fall in love with her,' she said.
After a life spent within the media looking out, the light has been turned back on her. Or as she put it: 'I've found myself in the unfortunate position of going from reporting the news to actually becoming the news.'
It's led her to disdain the industry that made her and broke her.
'When you're at the bottom of a pile and you know the truth, and you know that there are journalists who do know the truth, will either stay silent or invent a narrative, because I was silenced legally, there's a lot of mainstream media I'm quite disgusted by,' she said.
And yet, she still believes in its power to achieve positive change.
'Despite all that I have witnessed in recent times and all that I have been through, I do believe that it has all been worth it, because sunlight really is the best disinfectant, and that the only thing more frightening than speaking your truth is not speaking at all,' she said.
'And as personally, financially and professionally hard as the last few years have been for me, I will never regret putting the Brittany Higgins story to air.
'It has changed our country.
'It has exposed truths that desperately needed to be exposed, and as the toxic culture wars, the cheap headlines and the uninformed commentators have begun to fall away, I know the legacy that this story is continuing to deliver for so many women and survivors of sexual assault around this country, and I'm so proud to have been a part of that.
'That is what matters in my story.'
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