During the May 2022 election, one of Labor’s central campaign boasts was that it would create a national corruption body to deliver integrity, honesty and accountability to government.
The day before introducing laws to establish the NACC, new Labor Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said politicians and public officials should be “afraid” of this new body and its extensive powers to investigate serious or systemic corruption.
A few months later, on November 24, 2022, Dreyfus described his work as a “landmark reform” that he hoped would have a “profound effect on our democracy”.
Less than three weeks later, the Albanese government paid $2.4m of taxpayer money to a young woman whose heavily disputed allegations against a senior Coalition minister, Senator Linda Reynolds, were weaponised by Labor to win power. The circumstances surrounding the payment of public funds raised serious questions about the government’s integrity, honesty and accountability.
No one seems too afraid of the new corruption body. Instead, the NACC seems to be afraid of its own shadow. Despite $114m in funding this financial year, and 266 staff, the new corruption body has shown zero interest in getting to the bottom of how and why the Albanese government paid $2.4m to Brittany Higgins.
We know Reynolds made a referral to the NACC more than 18 months ago. We know the NACC commissioner, Paul Brereton, could have taken proactive steps to launch an NACC investigation.
We’ve had no luck eliciting what’s going on at the NACC. We asked the NACC on Monday whether it has formally decided to launch an investigation or not. Has Brereton or any other NACC staff member spoken to Reynolds about this?
No response to these questions. Only this: the matter “remains under consideration”.
There are new reasons for the NACC to get curious. Here’s a tip for Brereton: look at the statement of claim Reynolds filed last week against the commonwealth and its law firm, HWL Ebsworth.
Reynolds’s claims are red hot. She says the commonwealth and HWL Ebsworth owed duties to her when they took control of Higgins’s claims against her.
They breached those duties, Reynolds says, by, among other things, “not taking instructions from (Reynolds) as to the truth” of the claims Higgins was making.
Translation: She claims the search for the truth was sidelined when Higgins was paid $2.4m in taxpayer funds.
Annexure A to the statement of claim takes that further. The 27-page table sets out claims by Higgins on the left-hand side and contrary material on the right-hand side, including findings by Justice Michael Lee and evidence given under oath by Reynolds and Fiona Brown in Bruce Lehrmann’s criminal trial. Did those responsible for doling out taxpayer funds to Higgins read the transcript of the criminal trial? Did Brereton ask anyone involved in this $2.4m payment that question? Did the corruption tsar ask anyone involved in this $2.4m payment why those responsible for the payment to Higgins did not want to hear Reynolds’s version of the facts?
When war veterans make claims against the commonwealth for compensation for damage suffered in service to the country, there is a rigorous investigation, a long process – and usually paltry sums. Why was the payment to Higgins so different?
We can offer some assistance to Brereton: focus on the critical date of December 6, 2022.
Reynolds had already twice agreed to extend the statute of limitations for Higgins to lodge her statement of claim – first in March 2022 and again in September 2022. That meant December 6, 2022 was the final date to file her statement of claim in a court. Otherwise, it expired.
Higgins, through her lawyers, sought yet another extension. Reynolds said no. There was no reason for a further extension. The time for shadow boxing was over. Lehrmann’s rape trial had been discharged. Then DPP Shane Drumgold had decided not to proceed to a second trial. Higgins’s claims could be openly tested against evidence that had emerged from the criminal trial.
If Brereton reads Reynolds’s claim, he will see how the commonwealth changed its tune after Reynolds refused a third extension of time for Higgins.
In June 2022, the commonwealth had said it would “co-operate with Senator Reynolds in relation to the claims, as they relate to her”.
That changed on December 6, the last day for Higgins to file her claim. The same day, the commonwealth’s law firm, HWL Ebsworth, wrote to Reynolds’s lawyers saying the commonwealth had decided to “take control of the conduct of your client’s defence of Ms Higgins’s civil claims against her”. Reynolds was told not to attend the mediation if she wanted her legal bills paid.
This threw a shroud of secrecy over Higgins’s claim; a confidential settlement happened seven days later, on December 13, 2022.
The Attorney-General used his powers to muzzle Reynolds. He appears to have done everything in his power to ensure Higgins’s claims were never appropriately tested.
Perhaps that was no surprise, given that he, Katy Gallagher and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had conflicted themselves by making public statements in support of Higgins.
And remember the texts between Gallagher, Higgins and her then boyfriend, now husband, David Sharaz.
Were Labor ministers worried that the facts, if known, could have embarrassed them and made a mockery of the commonwealth’s $2.4m payment to Higgins?
Reynolds is in no doubt. “It was always clear to the commonwealth that I would vigorously defend these serious allegations against me. It was also clear to them that I would not be further extending the statute of limitations for Ms Higgins to file her claim,” she told The Australian this week.
“I believe this is why the Attorney-General took over my defence, to prevent her claims becoming public. To achieve this, Labor needed to completely shut me out. Had Justice Lee not made the documents public, Labor would have gotten away with the basis for the payment never being scrutinised.”
Lee would find that “it is evident several things being alleged (in the deed of settlement between Ms Higgins and the commonwealth) were untrue.” He listed in his judgment nine separate instances of falsehoods in the deed. But he hinted at more.
Reynolds has done much of the heavy lifting, with her legal claims, to shed light on the darker corners of this appalling saga. She deserves more answers: did the commonwealth and HWL Ebsworth breach duties she says they owed her by taking over the conduct of her defence?
The commonwealth and HWL Ebsworth must file their defence by May 26. Taxpayers deserve answers, too. Did the Albanese government shut out Reynolds because it didn’t want her or taxpayers to know the truth before paying public money to a young woman whose allegations against Reynolds were exploited by a line-up of Labor MPs at the last election?
On the cusp of another election, this simple and lingering question remains unanswered. Worse, it remains unexplored by the NACC. The “landmark” corruption body has only itself to blame if its reputation is in tatters.
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