The ACT's top prosecutor has denied giving a "knowingly false" answer in court and losing objectivity while leading the rape case against former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann.
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Director of Public Prosecutions Shane Drumgold SC took the stand as an independent inquiry into the case began public hearings on Monday.
The inquiry is examining the actions of Mr Drumgold and the police officers involved in investigating allegations Mr Lehrmann raped former colleague Brittany Higgins at Parliament House in 2019.
It will also consider whether ACT Victims of Crime Commissioner Heidi Yates acted appropriately in terms of the support she provided Ms Higgins during the case against Mr Lehrmann, whose trial was abandoned last year as a result of juror misconduct.
The charge of sexual intercourse without consent levelled at Mr Lehrmann, who has always denied the allegation, was ultimately discontinued.
On Monday, Mr Drumgold agreed his role as the territory's top prosecutor required him to be a fair and impartial "minister of justice".
He agreed with counsel assisting the inquiry, Erin Longbottom KC, that it was crucial for a prosecutor to remain objective in any criminal case, saying a miscarriage of justice could occur if that did not happen.
Asked if he ever lost objectivity in relation to Mr Lehrmann's case, he replied: "I don't believe so, no."
When the topic turned to why Mr Drumgold had not supported an application Mr Lehrmann made for a stay of proceedings after television presenter Lisa Wilkinson gave an "undesirable" speech about Ms Higgins at last year's Logie awards, the prosecutor said the relevant legal test had not been made out.
He was subsequently grilled about a file note relating to a conference he and his staff had with Ms Wilkinson, who was at that stage on the trial's witness list, before she gave the speech.
Mr Drumgold was shown a transcript of an exchange he had in court with Chief Justice Lucy McCallum, who asked if the note had been made contemporaneously.
He agreed with the judge that it had been, but he conceded on Monday that the note had in fact been edited days after its creation to include information about Ms Wilkinson's speech.
Challenged by Ms Longbottom about whether he had therefore made a "knowingly false" statement to Chief Justice McCallum, Mr Drumgold said he did not accept that.
He said he had the note as a whole in his mind when he gave that answer, having not broken it down "into its constituent parts".
Earlier, Ms Longbottom suggested to Mr Drumgold the matter of Mr Lehrmann had been "extraordinary".
Mr Drumgold described that as "a value judgement".
"It was not extraordinary in my sense," Mr Drumgold told the inquiry, describing the case as similar, from an evidentiary point of view, to many others he had prosecuted in the past.
However, he acknowledged the high-profile nature of the case had taken it outside the ordinary.
"I had to keep the publicity out of the courtroom," Mr Drumgold said.
He referred to there being "a lot of parliamentary stuff" happening in and around the case.
Mr Drumgold told the inquiry he needed to make the trial about "two people in a room, in a very narrow period", recalling how he had urged the jury not to be distracted by politicians or the #MeToo movement.
Before Mr Drumgold's evidence began, board of inquiry chairman Walter Sofronoff KC described the proceedings as "a powerful engine for uncovering the truth".
Mr Sofronoff said the inquiry's main purposes were to inform the ACT government and the community "about the truth".
He acknowledged that public inquiries inevitably hurt some people's reputations, describing this damage as something that "has to be lived with".
Mr Lehrmann is observing the inquiry's public hearings, which are taking place at the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal building.
Mr Drumgold's evidence continues.
