Jamie McKinnell

His lawyers also argued that he needs to be on bail to prepare a defence and they said that the fairness of the proceedings would be compromised if he had to do that while he was still in custody on remand.

And they said the evidence in this case might end up being nothing like the evidence in the defamation case.

They said that there are many unknowns when it comes to assessing the strength of the prosecution case.

So overall, they were arguing that all of this together should come as a reason why the judge should find exceptional circumstances.

They proposed bail conditions and they were arguing that all of that together would amount to a judge finding that he should be released on bail.

Well, the Crown raised two main bail concerns as they were opposing this application, and those two concerns were the risk of flight, the risk of interfering with witnesses and evidence.

Now, Ben Robert Smith's lawyers had already said that he's known about this investigation into him for a long time.

and they were arguing that he'll presumably continue to be monitored or surveilled.

So they were saying, look, that's a pretty good incentive to not do either of those things, especially interfere with witnesses or evidence.

But Simon Buchan SC, who was representing the Commonwealth DPP, he was also relying on what he called the gravely serious nature of the charges, also the number of charges, and what he was describing as the apparent strength of the Crown case as he was opposing this bail application case.

He was also saying to the judge that some of these allegations are allegations that are supported by defence witnesses.

And he was saying as well that by the end of July, the brief of evidence should have been substantially served on the defence.

And so he seemed to be putting that out there as a reason why there doesn't seem to be any issues with delays at the moment.

Well, a lot of his conditions are things that were proposed by his own lawyers because they would have been able to predict how to overcome this test that comes up in a bail application of an unacceptable risk.

So because the judge, Greg Grogan, in the end ruled that the conditions could offset those risks, it looks like they were pretty successful in coming up with proposed conditions that would

mitigate them.

So the conditions include he has to report to police three days of each week.

He has to be of good behaviour, which is a pretty standard condition.

He has to live at a set address.

He has to hand over his passport and not leave Australia.