Andrew Bolt: The questionable price of political payouts

Brittany Higgins has just had a cheque cut from the Albanese government and taxpaying mugs aren’t even allowed to know how much of our money she’s getting.

Brittany Higgins will be paid as much as $3m from the Albanese government. Picture: Gary Ramage

Brittany Higgins has just shown there’s a fast way to becoming a multi-millionaire: work in Parliament House and claim to have been raped.

No need to prove anything, either. In fact, you can refuse to go to court to sort out if you’re telling the truth.

And so Higgins, a former Liberal staffer, gets as much as $3m, after the Albanese government agreed on Tuesday to cut her a cheque.

What’s more, we taxpaying mugs aren’t even allowed to know how much she’s getting of our money. Higgins’ lawyer noted: “At the request of Ms Higgins, the parties have agreed that the terms of the settlement are confidential.”

Very convenient for Higgins and the government.

Worse, this is now a trend. Earlier this year, the Finance Department gave another former Liberal staffer, Rachelle Miller, $650,000 after she claimed she’d been bullied, harassed and discriminated against at work over her consensual affair with former education minister Alan Tudge, who she even claimed had kicked her.

Her allegations were hotly denied, just as was Higgins’ rape claim. (Be clear: I have no idea if Higgins was raped or not.)

But Miller, too, didn’t have to prove a thing in any court. She refused to give evidence to two workplace inquiries, yet still got paid out.

How does this keep happening? Is it really because the Finance Department figures it’s cheaper to hand over the money than to fight in court?

Perhaps politics helps to explain.

Brittany Higgins accused Bruce Lehrmann of rape. Picture: Gary Ramage

In Miller’s case, it sure suited the Morrison government to have her paid out rather than complain all through an election campaign.

As for Higgins, it was a gift to Labor when she accused a fellow Liberal staffer, Bruce Lehrmann, of raping her in the Parliament House office of then defence minister Linda Reynolds after a drunken night out.

Labor had hammered the Liberals for years as sexist and anti-women, and it hailed Higgins as a symbol of the rottenness of the Morrison government.

It was even better when she accused her bosses – ministers Reynolds and Michaelia Cash – of being unsympathetic and even trying to shut her up.

Never mind that both women denied her allegations, and Reynolds even called Higgins “a lying cow”. Never mind that a voicemail Higgins kept of a call from Cash recorded her boss expressing nothing but concern.

The agenda was too useful, so Labor members praised Higgins. A Women’s March had her speak of her trauma and the Morrison government’s bastardry. The National Press Club had her give an encore.

And all this before the trial of Lehrmann, who insisted there hadn’t even been sex, let alone rape.

It worked. The Morrison government was smashed at the election, with polls suggesting just 30 per cent of women voted for it, against 37 per cent of men.

Yet when Higgins finally got to tell her story in court it went as badly as police had privately predicted when urging the ACT’s Director of Public Prosecutions to drop the case.

Higgins admitted she’d falsely told her chief of staff she’d gone to a doctor about the rape, and that she’d had a meltdown in the toilet, when in fact she’d gone to a lunch. Other claims also didn’t check out.

Higgins then interrupted her evidence to check into a hospital, and when the trial was aborted (for other reasons) the DPP scrapped a retrial, claiming she could be killed by the stress.

Yet Higgins was immediately well enough to lodge this compensation claim, and to tweet she’d give evidence in court if Lehrmann tried to sue for compensation.

You’d think all this would make the Finance Department think it shouldn’t just hand over millions of dollars without even getting Higgins to prove anything in court – not just the rape but the sexual harassment, sex discrimination, disability discrimination, negligence and victimisation she claims she endured.

Instead, it agreed after just one mediation session this week to hand over the cash. Reynolds wanted to fight this in court, but instead was dropped from the claim, which just sailed through.

I’d bet the Attorney-General wouldn’t have wasted a second before agreeing to approve it.

Why would Labor want Higgins questioned and potentially exposed as an untruthful witness?

Why would Labor want to enrage activists by daring to doubt one of its hero-victims?

And why would it want the Liberals to seem innocent of Labor’s false charge of institutional misogyny?

No, Brittany Higgins had to be paid, and paid she now sure is.