MRDA (pronounced emm-ahr-dee-ey)
The
abbreviation of “Mandy Rice-Davies Applies”, an aphorism used in law and
politics to refer to any denial which is transparently self-interested.
1963:
An allusion to the statement “Well he
would, wouldn't he?”, said by Welsh model Mandy Rice-Davies (1944-2004) during
cross-examination in a trial at the Old Bailey (the central criminal court for
England & Wales) associated with the Profumo affair.
Lord
Astor, Mandy Rice-Davies and the Profumo Affair
The
context of Ms Rice-Davies’s answer was the question: “Are you aware that Lord Astor denies any impropriety in his
relationship with you?” and the answer “Well
he would, wouldn't he?” elicited from those in the court “some amusement”. MDRA (Mandy Rice-Davies Applies) thus became
in law and politics an aphorism used as “verbal shorthand” to refer to any
denial which is transparently self-interested although it doesn’t of necessity
imply a denial is untrue. In general
use, the fragment from the trial is often misquoted as “Well he would say that, wouldn't he?” because that better
encapsulates the meaning without being misleading.
The
Profumo affair was one of those fits of morality which from time-to-time would afflict
English society in the twentieth century and was a marvellous mix of class,
sex, spying & money, all things which make a good scandal especially juicy. John Profumo (1915-2006) was the UK’s Minister
for War (the UK cabinet retained the position until 1964 although it was disestablished
in the US in 1947) who, then 46, was found to be conducting an adulterous
affair with 19 year old topless model Christine Keeler (1942-2017) at the same
time she was also enjoying trysts with a Russian spy, attached to the Soviet
embassy with the cover of naval attaché.
Although there are to this day differing interpretations of the scandal,
there have never been any doubts this potential Cold-War conduit between a KGB
spy and Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for War represented at least a
potential conflict of interest.
MRDAs are common in courtrooms and among politicians but some became legends. In 1954, Dr HV Evatt (1894–1965; Australian attorney-general & foreign minister 1941-1949, and leader of opposition 1951-1960), in the midst of a particularly febrile period during the Cold War, wrote a letter to comrade Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986; Soviet foreign minister 1939-1949 & 1953-1956) asking if allegations of Soviet espionage in Australia were true. Comrade Molotov of course wrote back, politely denying the USSR engaged in spying anywhere. Assured, Evatt read the letter to the parliament and the members sat for a moment stunned until, on both sides, loudly laughing. It was a MRDA before there were MRDAs.
The
Profumo affair is noted also for being at least an influence in the end of the “age
of deference” in England and while that’s often probably overstated, the immediate
reaction and the aftermath proved it wasn’t only across colonial Africa that a “wind
of change” was blowing. The second Lord
Astor (1907–1966) was emblematic of the upper classes of England who once would
have expected deference from someone like Ms Rice-Davies, someone “not of the better classes” as his lordship
might have put it. Although what came to
be known as the “swinging sixties” didn’t really begin until a couple of years
after the Profumo affair when the baby-boomers began to come of age, the
generational shift had by then become apparent and it was something
surprisingly sudden as the interest of the young switched from pop music to politics. As recently as the 1959 election campaign,
the patrician Harold Macmillan (1894–1986; UK prime-minister 1957-1963) had
told the working classes “most of you have never had it so good” and for the
last time they would express their gratitude to their betters, delivering the
Tories an increased majority, an impressive achievement for "the last of the old Edwardians" who, upon
assuming the premiership in 1957 in the wake of the Suez debacle, had told the
Queen he doubted his administration would last six weeks.
In
the matter of Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty
Limited [2024] FCA 369
Mr Justice Lee.
Justice
Michael Lee (b 1965) in April 2024 handed down one of the more anticipated judgments
of recent years, finding Bruce Lehrmann (b 1995), on the civil law test of the
balance of probabilities, had raped Brittany Higgins (b 1993) on the sofa in a
ministerial suite in Parliament House while the victim was
affected by strong drink. Apart from the
heightened public interest in the verdict, lawyers were watching closely to see
if there would be encouragement for those defending themselves in defamation
cases, something which had been lent unexpected strength by an earlier
judgment; although the matter of rape
was central to the facts, Lehrmann v
Network Ten was a defamation case.
However, for those who appreciate judicial findings for their use of
language, Justice Lee didn’t disappoint and although neither Ms Rice-Davies nor
MRDA were mentioned in his text, as he assessed the conduct and evidence of Mr
Lehrmann, they may have come to mind.
Janet Albrechtsen in her study.
In his opening remarks, the judge acknowledged the case had become a cause celebre for many and that it was best described as “an omnishambles”, the construct being the Latin omni(s) (all) + shambles, from the Middle English schamels (plural of schamel), from the Old English sċeamol & sċamul (bench, stool), from the Proto-West Germanic skamul & skamil (stool, bench), from the Vulgar Latin scamellum, from the Classical Latin scamillum (little bench, ridge), from scamnum (bench, ridge, breadth of a field). In English, shambles enjoyed a number of meanings including “a scene of great disorder or ruin”, “a cluttered or disorganized mess”, “a scene of bloodshed, carnage or devastation” or (most evocatively), “a slaughterhouse”. As one read the judgement one could see why the judge was drawn to the word although, in the quiet of his chambers, “clusterfuck” may have been in his thoughts as he pondered the best euphemism. Helpfully, one of the Murdoch press’s legal commentators, The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen (b 1966; by Barry Goldwater out of Ayn Rand) who had been one of the journalists most interested in the case, informed the word nerds omnishambles (1) dated from 2009 when it was coined for the BBC political satire The Thick Of It and (2) had endured well enough to be named the Oxford English Dictionary’s (OED) 2021 Word of the Year. The judge's linguistic flourish was a hint of things to come in what was one of the more readable recent judgments.
Noting Mr Lehrmann’s original criminal trial on the rape charge had been aborted (after having already been delayed for reasons related to the defamation matter) because of jury misconduct with a subsequent retrial not pursued because of the prosecution’s concern about the fragile mental state of the complainant, the judge observed “Having escaped the lion’s den, Mr Lehrmann made the mistake of coming back for his hat.” In other words, Mr Lehrmann who could have walked away with no findings against him, lured by the millions of dollars to be gained, rolled the legal dice and was found to have committed rape. He is of course not the first to fall victim to suffer self-inflicted legal injury in not dissimilar circumstances; the writers (from different literary traditions) Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) and Jeffrey Archer (b 1940) both were convicted and imprisoned as a consequence of them having initiated libel actions. Whether Mr Lehrmann will now face a retrial in the matter of rape is in the hands of the Australian Capital Territory’s (ACT) Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). In such a case, it would be necessary to prove the event happened under the usual test in criminal law: beyond reasonable doubt. Even if that isn’t pursued by the DPP, his time in courtrooms may not be over because it’s possible he may face action because of his conduct in this trial with the handling of certain documents and another unrelated matter is pending in Queensland.
In
considering the evidence offered by Mr Lehrmann, the judge appears to have
found some great moments in the history of MRDAs:
Commenting
on his claim to having returned (after midnight following Friday evening’s
hours of convivial drinking) to his Parliament House office to write papers about
the French submarines and related government matters, he observed Mr Lehrmann “…hitherto had demonstrated no outward signs
of being a workaholic.” “To remark
that Mr Lehrmann was a poor witness is an exercise in understatement.”
Regarding the claim Mr Lehrmann had made to someone to whom he’d just been introduced that he was “…waiting on a clearance to come through so that he could go and work at Asis.” (the Australian Security Intelligence Service; the external intelligence service al la the UK SIS (MI6) or the US CIA (although without the assassinations… as far as is known)), the judge observed she “…kept her well-founded incredulity to herself.”, such “Walter Mitty-like imaginings” demonstrating he “…had no compunction about departing from the truth if he thought it expedient.”
Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December, 2011.
The
reading of the judgement was live-streamed and the passage which got the loudest
chuckle was in the discussion of Mr Lehrmann’s deciding whether he found Ms Higgins
attractive. In an interview on
commercial television broadcast in 2023, he’d denied finding the young lady
attractive, despite the existence of comments dating from 2019 indicating the
opposite. Pausing only briefly, Justice
Lee delivered this news with an arched eyebrow:
“When confronted by this
inconsistency, his attempt to explain it away by suggesting the attraction he
felt for Ms Higgins was ‘just like [the attraction] I can find [in] anybody
else in this [court]room, irrespective of gender’ was as disconcerting as it
was unconvincing.” The judge ordered
to audience to suppress their laughter.
Even
regarding submarines as a likely topic over drinks, his honour was sceptical: “With the exception of Mr Lehrmann, no one
who gave evidence as to their time at The Dock could recall discussing
Australia’s submarine contracts with France at either table. The lack of
recollection of any discussion of this topic is intuitively unsurprising. Declaiming on the topics of who was building
submarines and where they were being built was not quite the repartee one would
usually expect to hear over a convivial drink on a Friday night between 20
[something]-year-olds out for a good time – even if (with respect) one would
not expect the badinage of the Algonquin Round Table.” (an early twentieth
century, shifting aggregation of men & women of letters who met over lunch
in New York’s Algonquin Hotel, their barbs and thoughts often appearing in their
newspaper & magazine columns; they dubbed themselves “The Vicious Circle” and
were a sort of Cliveden set without the politics. Cliveden was a stately home in Buckinghamshire,
the country seat of Lord Astor and the scene of many of the events central to
the Profumo affair).
The
judge was forensic in his deconstruction of Mt Lehrmann’s MRDA he returned to Parliament
House after being out drinking with Ms Higgins and others in order to retrieve
his keys: “If the reason Mr Lehrmann
needed to return to Parliament House was to collect his keys, he could have
texted his girlfriend to have her meet him at the door or called her. Mr Lehrmann asks me to accept the proposition
that it was ‘a process to get in’ to his shared flat and that to avoid this
complication, he preferred to: (a) go out of his way to go back to work in the
early hours; (b) lie to Parliament House security; (c) sign the necessary
register; (d) be issued with a pass; (e) go through a metal detector; (f) be
escorted by a security guard to his office; (g) obtain his keys from his
office; (h) book another Uber; (i) go back through a Parliamentary exit; (j)
meet the ride-share car; and then (k) ride home.”
In
psychiatry, distinction is made between the “habitual” and “compulsive” liar
and while this wasn’t something Justice Lee explored, he did in one passage sum
up his assessment of the likely relationship to truth in anything Mr Lehrmann
might say: “I do not think Mr Lehrmann is
a compulsive liar, and some of the untruths he told during his evidence may
sometimes have been due to carelessness and confusion, but I am satisfied that
in important respects he told deliberate lies. I would not accept anything he
said except where it amounted to an admission, accorded with the inherent
probabilities, or was corroborated by a contemporaneous document or a witness
whose evidence I accept.”
One
fun footnote from the case was a non-substantive matter, Ms Lisa Wilkinson (b
1959), the Network 10 journalist at the centre of the defamation claim,
objecting to being characterized as a “tabloid journalist”. It transpired her employment history included
stints with Dolly, the Australian Women’s Weekly and commercial
television including the Beauty & the
Beast show. Unfortunately, she wasn’t
asked to define what she thought “tabloid journalism” meant; perhaps Justice
Lee decided he’d heard enough MRDAs that day.
On the basis that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann did rape Ms Higgins, his claim for damages against Network Ten for defamatory material earlier broadcast was dismissed. The judge found the material indeed had the capacity to defame but because the imputations substantially were true, their defense was sustained. So, the only millions of dollars now to be discussed concern the legal costs: who is to pay whom, the judge asking the party’s submission be handed to the court by 22 April. Mr Lehrmann’s legal team has not indicated if they’re contemplating an appeal.
Despite many opportunities, Peter Dutton (b 1970; leader of the opposition and leader of the Australian Liberal Party since May 2022) has never denied being a Freemason.
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