Linda Reynolds harassed Brittany Higgins, court told
Linda Reynolds is an unreliable witness whose ‘problematic and implausible’ evidence should not be accepted by the court, Brittany Higgins’s lawyer says.
Linda Reynolds is an unreliable witness whose “problematic and implausible” evidence should not be accepted by the court, Brittany Higgins’s lawyer says.
Rachael Young SC used her closing address on Monday in Senator Reynolds’s defamation action against Ms Higgins to spell out in detail why the senator’s case was without merit, highlighting evidence she said undermined her claims about what she knew – or should have known – when she met with Ms Higgins soon after the staffer said she was raped inside Senator Reynolds’s Parliament House office.
Ms Young told the West Australian Supreme Court that the senator’s leaking of confidential documents to media, her conduct during the ultimately abandoned criminal trial of Ms Higgins’s rapist Bruce Lehrmann, and her description of Ms Higgins as a “lying cow” were all examples of her “harassment” of her client.
Ms Young attacked Senator Reynolds’s decision to launch a defamation action against a young female rape victim who had gone public with her rape allegations in an effort to make Parliament House a safer place.
She said her client’s “altruistic” actions had a “profound and lasting impact” on the way gendered violence and safety issues were addressed in workplaces across Australia, and it was Ms Higgins, rather than Senator Reynolds, who had paid the greatest cost from the saga.
Ms Higgins did not give evidence to the trial because of problems with her health, with Ms Young telling the court her client had ongoing mental health issues.
“Without question, the heaviest burden has and will continue to be carried by Ms Higgins, the survivor of a serious crime which has affected every aspect of her life,” she said.
“Ms Higgins considered that her continued silence would make her complicit in any future incident, but out of that trauma, she achieved overarching good out of the suffering she endured.”
Talking judge Paul Tottle through her submissions, Ms Young highlighted the “lying cow” episode – with Senator Reynolds making the comment in front of staff inside her office after Ms Higgins went public with her allegations in 2021 – as she mounted a truth defence against the defamation claim.
The senator has since said that the comment was made in reference to Ms Higgins’s claims about the handling of the allegation by Senator Reynolds and parliament, and not the rape allegation itself. Ms Higgins threatened the senator with defamation after the comment was revealed by The Australian, with Senator Reynolds paying $10,000 to a charity to settle the matter.
Ms Young said the comment was, as then-prime minister Scott Morrison described it at the time, “a disgraceful slur” and was particularly important given Ms Higgins’s claims had not then been fully investigated or tested by the court at the time.
“The court should find that the slur was harassing of Ms Higgins,” Ms Young said. “There’s no real dispute it ought not have been said.”
Senator Reynolds’s decision to send correspondence marked as confidential to The Australian’s journalist Janet Albrechtsen was further evidence of harassment that did not reflect well on the senator, Ms Young said.
She said Senator Reynolds knew that sending the communications, which stemmed from Ms Higgins’s compensation claim against the commonwealth, would threaten the confidentiality and/or the privilege of those letters. “The senator considered Ms Albrechtsen, to use her phrase, was a fair and balanced reporter. The senator knew Ms Albrechtsen had a wide readership in the nation’s paper of record,” Ms Young said.
“We say it will be inferred and found, despite the senator’s denials, that Ms Albrechtsen would more likely publish articles that offered a viewpoint … that is more favourable to the senator than to Ms Higgins.”
Ms Higgins ultimately secured $2.445m from that compensation claim. Senator Reynolds has lodged a complaint with the National Anti-Corruption Commission over the payout, alleging the federal government corruptly froze her out of the process.
Ms Young walked through eight pieces of evidence she said showed Senator Reynolds either suspected, or should have suspected, that unwanted sexual activity had occurred against Ms Higgins in her office before she met with Ms Higgins in that same location on April 1, 2019, just over a week after the rape.
An internal report given to Senator Reynolds before the meeting, detailing the time and circumstances under which Ms Higgins and her rapist Bruce Lehrmann had entered Parliament House, “ought to have rung alarm bells” while she had been told by her then chief of staff Fiona Brown before the meeting that Ms Higgins had told her she remembered “Bruce on top of her”.
Evidence given during the trial by former AFP assistant commissioner Leanne Close also contradicted that given by Senator Reynolds, it was submitted.
Her testimony, backed up by her notes from the time, described Senator Reynolds pointing to the lounge in her office and saying “that’s where the assault had occurred”.
In contrast, Senator Reynolds testified that she only learned of the rape allegation after the AFP told her about it.
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