Australia consumed by rape claim against attorney general

Protests planned as unease grows over government's resistance to ordering inquiry into alleged incident in 1988

With the Australian government already scrambling to deal with the fallout over its handling of an allegation of sexual assault against a minister's staffer - alleged to have occurred just metres from the prime minister's office in 2019 - a rape allegation levelled against the attorney general has sent it sprawling.

Christian Porter has emphatically denied all allegations he raped a fellow competitor when the then teenaged pair attended a debating competition in Sydney in 1988. The alleged victim died in 2020.