Linda Reynolds to give evidence in Brittany Higgins defamation trial
Linda Reynolds’ lawyer says these images – tendered as evidence to the Brittany Higgins defamation trial – help prove her allegations Higgins fabricated her claims of a rape cover-up.
Linda Reynolds is set to endure a gruelling few days of cross-examination for the defamation matter she has brought against her former staff member Brittany Higgins.
Senator Reynolds is suing Ms Higgins in the WA Supreme Court over a series of Instagram, Twitter and Threads posts that she claims falsely alleged she had “harassed” Ms Higgins, and mishandled allegations of rape made against Bruce Lehrmann by failing to provide Ms Higgins with any support.
She is expected to give evidence for most of this week before returning to Canberra for the resumption of parliament.
Ms Higgins is not expected to give evidence until later in the trial.
The first day of the trial, which began on Friday, saw Senator Reynolds’s lawyer, Martin Bennett, tender multiple photographs showing Ms Higgins smiling and laughing while out on the campaign trail across Perth just months after she was allegedly raped by then-colleague Mr Lehrmann.
Mr Bennett said the evidence showed how Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz had used falsehoods and lies to create a narrative that Senator Reynolds had led a political cover-up of Ms Higgins’s alleged rape.
“The fact she had been raped was traumatic and terrible but it needed something more to attract the attention, to attract media interest, to attract the promotion of Ms Higgins, so she made it a political sex scandal. That’s the fiction that needed a villain and she cast Linda Reynolds in that role,” he said.
Mr Bennett said the images and text messages showed that the $2.445m settlement secured from the commonwealth by Ms Higgins was built on a falsity that Senator Reynolds had been given no opportunity to correct.
He said the outcome of the confidential mediation between Ms Higgins and the federal government – which was leaked to the media “before the ink was dry” – would have caused the public to believe Ms Higgins’s claims that the senator had harassed her and isolated her in the wake of her alleged rape.
In his judgment in the Lehrmann defamation case this year, Federal Court judge Michael Lee found, on the balance of probabilities, that Mr Lehrmann raped Ms Higgins but expressly rejected claims Senator Reynolds was involved in a cover-up of the assault.
Mr Lehrmann’s criminal trial was aborted due to juror misconduct, and he has lodged an appeal against Justice Lee’s findings.
In her defence, Ms Higgins amplifies her allegations that she was the victim of an attempted cover-up, stating she felt under pressure not to make a complaint “in the interests of the Liberal Party” in the lead-up to an election.
She claims Senator Reynolds sought to dissuade her from speaking further with her about the alleged assault “by telling her she was not the right person to be talking to about it”; had minimised the incident by telling her “that this is something women go through”; and had then referred to the upcoming election.
Senator Reynolds had “placed pressure” on her, Ms Higgins said, by asking her whether she was going to report the matter to police, and saying if she was, she should let the minister know.
Former prime minister Scott Morrison may also be called as a witness, as well as former foreign minister senator Marise Payne and Senator Reynolds’s chief of staff, Fiona Brown.
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