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Bill Shorten has been spotted on a walk through Sydney’s Kings Cross on the day Christian Porter denied raping a 16-year-old girl in 1988.
The former Labor leader had an eerily similar experience in August 2014 when he also tearfully denied sexual assault allegations.
Mr Shorten was strolling with an advisor through the same streets where Mr Porter and the woman he is accused of raping hung out three decades earlier. He is in Sydney for Labor’s shadow cabinet meeting.
Bill Shorten has been spotted on a walk through Sydney’s Kings Cross on the day Christian Porter denied raping a 16-year-old girl in 1988
Mr Porter, like Mr Shorten, refused to step down as attorney-general as police had closed the investigation after the woman took her own life last year.
But earlier in the day, columnist Jessica Irvine claimed on the Today Show that Mr Shorten should not stay in federal parliament because of the 2014 allegations.
‘We need to change the standard of behaviour [of politicians],’ she said.
‘We do not want people who have been accused of such things [being allowed to stay in parliament].’
As Shorten had been forced to do, Porter denied the truth of claims he had raped a teenage girl while attending a debating contest at Sydney University 33 years ago.
Mr Porter today said he ‘now knew how the former opposition leader felt’ in dealing the sexual allegations that were levelled against him.
Mr Shorten was accused of rape by a woman who claimed the former Labor leader assaulted her in 1986 during a Young Labor conference in Portarlington, near Geelong, Victoria.
No charges were ever laid against him and on August 21, 2014, he released a brief statement confirming police had dropped their investigation into the claims.
‘I will not go into the details, except to say that the allegation was untrue and abhorrent,’ Mr Shorten said at a press conference.
Mr Shorten was strolling with a minder through the same streets where Mr Porter and the woman he is accused of raping hung out three decades earlier
Approached by Daily Mail Australia, Mr Shorten declined to comment on the remarks of both Irvine and Mr Porter.
Government supporters say Mr Shorten did not step down and so Mr Porter should not either.
But Labor shadow home affairs minister Kristina Keneally said that is not a fair analogy because Mr Shorten’s case was thoroughly investigated for 10 months.
‘What we have here is a police investigation that can’t proceed, because the alleged victim has died,’ she told Sky News.
‘And the police have determined they cannot gather enough admissible evidence. But there has not been a full investigation into these allegations.
‘They have not been examined, as they need to be thoroughly and closely. And I think there are still very important questions.’
The woman who accused Mr Porter never made a formal statement to police who were due to travel to her home in Adelaide in March 2020 but postponed due to Covid-19.
In June the woman withdrew her allegation and died by suicide the next day, causing the investigation to be suspended before it was officially closed this week.
Mr Porter, 50, a former public prosecutor, confirmed he attended a debating competition at Sydney University with his accuser when he was 17 and she was 16.
The former Labor leader had an eerily similar experience in August 2014 when he also tearfully denied sexual assault allegations
Christian Porter faces the press pack in Perth as he denies the sexual assault allegations
However, he categorically denied ever sleeping with the woman who has since taken her own life.
‘The things that have been claimed to happen did not happen,’ he said through tears in the emotional conference on Wednesday afternoon.
‘I did not sleep with the [alleged] victim. We didn’t have anything of that nature happen between us,’ he added.
By unveiling himself, Mr Porter ended six days of speculation over the accused’s identity after the woman’s allegation was published in the media without naming the cabinet minister.
Mr Porter admitted that he can’t remember every single detail of the night in question but insisted that he would not have forgotten having sex with someone.
‘The things I have read did not happen. And to suggest that they could be forgotten is ridiculous, they just never happened,’ he said.
Asked if he had ever spent time alone with the woman, he said: ‘It’s not impossible, I have never been in the person’s room.’
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