Andrew Bolt: Labor’s secret deal to compensate Brittany Higgins stinks of corruption

It already seemed improper that Higgins had been paid millions after one day of mediation with no serious checking of her claims. But now the details have been released it’s even more inexcusable.

Brittany Higgins should not have been paid so much, so fast, writes Andrew Bolt. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Nikki Short

The Albanese government’s secret deal to “compensate” Brittany Higgins has finally been released. And it stinks even worse of corruption.

The first thing this settlement tells us is that Higgins really can’t be trusted to tell the truth.

She last week told the Federal Court in a defamation case launched by her alleged rapist, Bruce Lehrmann, this government gave her $2.3m.

False. The deed of settlement, finally made public on Thursday by order of Justice Michael Lee, reveals it was even more: $2.445m.

Higgins also told the court this settlement confirmed that “the Commonwealth admitted that they breached their duty of care” – that the former Morrison government had indeed treated her badly after Lehrmann allegedly raped her in the Parliament House office of then Defence Minister Linda Reynolds on a drunken night out.

False again. The settlement says it was made “without any admissions of liability”.

Even before the release of this deed of settlement, this mega-payout to a woman who’d helped Labor to destroy the Morrison Liberal government had seemed an improper payment for political purposes.

The Albanese government had handed Higgins these millions after only one day of mediation, with no serious checking of her claims. There’s not even proof she was raped. Lehrmann denies it and a criminal trial was called off without any verdict.

Worse, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus even banned the two Liberal Ministers Higgins accused of mistreating her, Reynolds and Michaelia Cash, from giving evidence at the mediation to deny it.

But now that we have this settlement, the payout seems even more inexcusable.

That’s not just because it confirms that Higgins’ account of what happened that night in 2019, and in the aftermath, is unreliable, to put it mildly.

Brittany Higgins was paid $2.445m. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Jeremy Piper

For instance, Higgins has also admitted in this hearing to lying to police and friends about going to a doctor after the alleged rape. She falsely claimed she’d had a three-hour panic attack. She claimed she was “fall-down drunk” that night, when CCTV footage from Parliament House show her steady on her feet, and even scampering lightly down a corridor.

Adding to suspicions are the items this settlement lists that make up the payout.

They include $400,000 for Higgins’ hurt, distress and humiliation at being treated so badly – allegedly – by Reynolds and Cash. That’s an astonishing amount, given neither woman was responsible for the alleged rape itself.

There’s another $1,480,000 for Higgins’ being so damaged by her supposed treatment by the Liberals that she’d have trouble ever working again.

Was that ever likely? In fact, Higgins has since worked in unpaid jobs and got a $108,000 advance to write a book about her alleged rape.

Text messages uncovered by the Daily Mail even show a friend at Victoria’s First Peoples Assembly telling Higgins she could work there as a media adviser, apparently after telling her bosses Higgins had Aboriginal ancestry. Higgins replied she wasn’t sure which tribe she was connected to because her grandfather stopped checking, but she still got the job.

The settlement also records Higgins getting $220,000 for medical and like expenses to deal with the alleged rape.

Brittany Higgins was paid more than $200,000 for medical expenses. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gary Ramage

But how could she have racked up medical bills so very high? Why was the government responsible?

Then there’s another $100,000 for past and future “domestic assistance”.

Pardon? Could Higgins really need the equivalent of nearly two years of full-time professional domestic care because of what the Liberal government did to her? Does that sound likely, when Higgins has since had pictures posted of herself and her partner at Paris, the Maldives, Geneva, London, and a Snowy Mountains ski trip, and also posted recently about a planned stay in the south of France?

This does not look like a reasonable settlement of a claim of mistreatment by Liberal Ministers.

It seems a political fix. It seems Labor paid Higgins so much so fast, without questioning her story, because it really wanted voters to believe she was indeed raped and the sexist Morrison government had treated her terribly.

Labor didn’t dare doubt Higgins now, after spending months bashing the Liberals for mistreating this alleged rape victim. Labor leader Anthony Albanese himself had declared: “Brittany Higgins … reinforced to me the courage it took in order to come forward.”

So when Albanese became Prime Minister, his government had to pay off the woman he’d exploited as a hero victim.

This was not compensation, I suspect, but the creation of a $2.445m legend of Liberals being bastards.

Call in the National Anti-Corruption Agency now.