Linda Reynolds’ friend describes senator’s ‘state of distress’ after Coalition’s 2022 election defeat
Linda Reynolds’ close friend has described how the senator broke down after failing to secure any shadow ministry roles in the wake of the Coalition’s 2022 election defeat.
One of Linda Reynolds’ closest friends has described how the senator broke down after she learned she had failed to secure any shadow ministry roles in the wake of the Coalition’s 2022 election defeat.
Denita Wawn, chief executive of Canberra-based Master Builders Australia, told the West Australian Supreme Court on Thursday about Senator Reynolds’ “heightened state of distress” during a weekend away shortly after the 2022 election.
Ms Wawn said the senator’s state that weekend was the worst she’d seen since Senator Reynolds was hospitalised soon after Brittany Higgins went public with her allegation that she had been raped by Bruce Lehrmann inside Senator Reynolds’ Parliament House office.
“My recollection is she was very upset that she had not been made a shadow minister, or even a junior shadow minister, which in effect had stopped her ministerial career,” Ms Wawn said.
Senator Reynolds is suing Ms Higgins and her husband David Sharaz offer social media posts the senator says implied she had mishandled Ms Higgins’ rape allegation and had harassed her former staffer.
Federal Court judge Michael Lee found in April that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann had raped Ms Higgins. Mr Lehrmann has always denied the allegations and is appealing against the decision.
Ms Wawn has been friends with Senator Reynolds for more than 20 years and is in contact with her at least once a week.
She said the only time she had seen Senator Reynolds in a worse state than during that 2022 getaway was in 2021, soon after Ms Higgins first appeared on The Project.
Ms Wawn said she and her friends were incredibly concerned with the senator’s wellbeing in the aftermath of that program, telling the court she was worried that the senator could die.
Senator Reynolds was hospitalised for weeks after the 2021 revelations after the stress of the situation exacerbated a pre-existing heart condition.
“She was a mess, I think is the best way to describe her both physically and mentally,” Ms Wawn said.
“Physically she was shaking, she was pale, she looked weak. Mentally she was at a high state of distress, she was looping and being triggered by any little thing.”
Asked what she meant by ‘looping’, Ms Wawn said Senator Reynolds was “constantly repeating lines” as she tried to rationalise Ms Higgins’ allegations that the senator had mishandled her allegations.
Ms Wawn was also closely involved in Senator Reynolds’ 2021 settlement with Ms Higgins over the senator’s description of her former staffer as a “lying cow”. That remark, made by the senator in front of her staff as they watched Ms Higgins’ appearance on The Project, was revealed by The Australian and prompted Ms Higgins to threaten Senator Reynolds with a defamation action.
They ended up settling the dispute after Senator Reynolds formally apologised and donated $10,000 to a Canberra women’s crisis centre.
Under cross-examination from Ms Higgins’ lawyer Rachael Young SC – who is trying to mount a truth defence against the defamation allegation – Ms Wawn acknowledged that the fallout from the “lying cow” saga, including a public rebuke from then-prime minister Scott Morrison, had caused her a significant amount of stress.
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Ms Wawn said she had tried to encourage Senator Reynolds to settle the “lying cow” matter with Ms Higgins.
“I counselled her that what she had said was inappropriate, and that the right thing to do would be to go into that settlement and recognise her mistake and to deal with it in a way that reflected that she needed to own up to that mistake,” she said.
Ms Dawn’s comments about Senator Reynolds’ mental state were echoed by her brother Andrew, who testified about seeing her in Perth soon after the scandal emerged.
“Mentally, she was obviously not well,” Mr Reynolds said.
“To see her sitting on the couch in her pyjamas, rolled up in a ball, was very difficult.”
Ms Young asked Mr Reynolds about a conversation he had with his sister about her decision to settle the “lying cow” matter.
Mr Reynolds confirmed to Ms Young that his sister had told him that the settlement was “not fair” and that she did it “because she had to make it go away”.
He also affirmed that he had had discussions in which Senator Reynolds told him that she would no longer be able to secure a minister or shadow minister role, and that the income of a backbencher was “not enough to sustain her”.
The court also heard from Dean Carlson, who worked in Senator Reynolds at the time of Ms Higgins’ alleged rape and who later replaced Fiona Brown as Senator Reynolds’ chief of staff.
Mr Carlson told how he had been part of a “heated” phone call with Senator Reynolds and Ms Brown shortly after Ms Higgins’ alleged rape.
At that stage, the incident was being treated as a security breach rather than a suspected sexual assault. Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann had entered Parliament House in the early hours of a Saturday morning, and Ms Higgins had later been found partially naked on a couch in Senator Reynolds’ personal office.
Mr Carlson said Senator Reynolds had consulted with the then-Special Minister of State Alex Hawke and had determined that the office should report the incident to the Australian Federal Police.
“This position was challenged by Ms Brown, who did not want to do that without the express permission of Ms Higgins. The conversation became quite heated,” Mr Carlson said.
After several further meetings that afternoon, the decision was made that Ms Brown would reach out to Ms Higgins and offer her support in making contact with the AFP.
“I supported Ms Brown’s position. I thought it was important that Ms Higgins had agency over any action around her circumstances and that her privacy was paramount,” Mr Carlson said.
He was quizzed about the travel arrangements put in place for Canberra-based staff, including himself and Ms Higgins, when they were seconded to Perth to work on Senator Reynolds’ 2019 re-election campaign. The team moved to Perth just weeks after Ms Higgins’ alleged rape.
While the staff from Canberra were given the option to make return visits to the capital during their time in Perth, Ms Higgins was instead given special dispensation to make return visits to the Gold Coast, where her parents were based.
Asked by Ms Young if that special treatment was put in place because her colleagues knew that she was not coping at the time, Mr Carlson said the decision was more about “fairness”.,
“We could have offered the same opportunity to miss hills to fly back to Canberra, but there would have been no one in Canberra for her,” he said.
“So in recognition of the fact that she was the only one in the campaign who hadn’t seen family for an extended period of time, we thought that it would be appropriate for her to travel to the South East Queensland during the course of the election campaign.”
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