Peter Slipper Slips Away from Sexual Harassment Case by Former Staff

Federal Court Justice Steven Rares threw out on Wednesday the sexual harassment case filed against disgraced House Speaker Peter Slipper by his former staff James Ashby in April.

In throwing out the case, Mr Rares said the main purpose of the proceedings was to pursue a political attack against Mr Slipper and allowing the case to prosper would bring disrepute to the justice system and be unfair to the embattled MP for Fisher, Queensland.

Due to the case Mr Slipper was forced to resign as speaker in October.

He had denied the allegations of sexual harassment and insisted Mr Ashby returned the flirtatious relationship. The former staff submitted 270 pages of text messages as proof of harassment.

ABC read a sample of a text message sent by Mr Ashby to the MP on Dec 27, 2011 which stated: "I'm going to smack u! Arhhhhh! You're cruising for a bruising!"

In February 2012, Mr Ashby and a colleague, Karen Doane, initiated frequent communication with several politicians such as Mal Brough, the rival of Mr Slipper for the Queensland seat, to seek employment for Ms Doane with the Liberal Party or Clive Palmer. They eventually leaked details of Mr Slipper's travel records based on the MP's diary.

In pursuing the case, Michael Harmer, the lawyer of Mr Ashby, even included an alleged incriminating 2003 video of the MP with a younger man. Mr Hares said the including of the video was scandalous, oppressive and vexatious.

Mr Ashby expressed disappointment with the court decision. He insisted the speaker sexually harassed him and plans to appeal the ruling.

Reacting to the court decision, Trade Minister Craig Emerson said the speaker suffered injustice which is indicative of Coalition head Tony Abbott's leadership. "This is a scandal of enormous proportions that Tony Abbott's Liberals would abuse legal processes, court processes to seek to change the government of Australia," he told ABC.

Mr Emerson said no Labor Party member supports or condones the content of the text message exchanges between the two - which are private conversations - but they came out as a result of a process described by the judge as an abuse.

While Mr Slipper said he feels vindicated by the court decision, he refused to comment further on the ruling.