Christian Porter's defamation action was touted by his lawyers as a substitute for the Inquiry We Didn't Get to Have when the PM refused to read the allegations against him and senior NSW Police rejected the opportunity to take Kate's statement on three separate occasions. 1/4

Despite a defamation case always being an inappropriate forum for such serious criminal allegations to be tested, in the absence of anything else, we thought: "Oh well...bring it on.". 2/4

Now his lawyers are trying to prevent swathes of the defence evidence from being presented to their vaunted inquiry at all, which rather undermines their earlier argument that this would be a rigorous test of all evidence against their client. 3/4

They are trying to prevent further batches of evidence from being made public, leading one to wonder what their client has to hide. Extraordinary but ultimately completely unsurprising tactics. #auspol #porter 4/4