AFP weighs up potential investigation of Higgins' phone records leak

Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw said police were "reviewing that material and that case as we speak," when asked at the National Press Club on Wednesday if an investigation was under way.

"Without me getting technical - it is not an investigation, it will be reviewing the material to see if there is a threshold for an investigation," Mr Kershaw said.

Justice Lee said in his judgment that the "inescapable conclusion" was that Mr Lehrmann, who he found on the balance of probabilities had raped Ms Higgins in Parliament House in 2019, had leaked Ms Higgins' private phone records, contained in court documents obtained during his criminal trial, to Seven's Spotlight program.

Mr Lehrmann has denied leaking any confidential documents and is yet to comment on Justice Lee's findings. Attempts to reach the former Liberal Party staffer through his lawyers on Wednesday were unsuccessful. Legal experts say the use of such confidential documents obtained through discovery for an unrelated purpose may constitute a contempt of court.

Two separate sources close to Seven told The Canberra Times the network's journalists would not reveal their sources.

A spokesman for the media company said in a statement: "As Seven has previously made clear, it is not aware of using any material in the program in breach of the law."

Ms Higgins released a statement on Saturday responding to the judgment, which said she had been "devastated" by the way Seven gave her rapist a nationwide platform "to maintain his lies".

Network Ten asked the AFP to investigate "a suspect contempt of court" by the leaking of evidence from Mr Lehrmann's trial last June.

Mr Lehrmann's criminal trial was aborted in 2022 due to juror misconduct and plans for a retrial abandoned over concerns about Ms Higgins' mental health.

Mr Kershaw used his National Press Club address to warn of the growing risk of bad actors using technology to cause harm, including cyber crime, terrorism, fraud, child exploitation and foreign interference.

"Virtual hands can reach through almost any device," he said in the speech.

"The majority of federal crime is tech enabled."

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He warned that child exploitation offenders were using images of Australian children posted innocently online by family members, to create AI-generated child abuse materials by "nudifying children whose clothed images have been uploaded online for perfectly legitimate reasons".

Mr Kershaw said community members had a role to play in preventing the use of the internet to carry out criminal activities, urging parents to update their privacy settings and "lock down" their social media accounts.

"Together, we must find solutions to these challenges," the Commissioner said.