Linda Reynolds’ unending feud with Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz explained
Fresh claims in the bitter defamation battle between Brittany Higgins, her partner David Sharaz and Liberal senator Linda Reynolds, who won’t stop until she gets an apology.
One name has echoed through the Brittany Higgins legal saga for years: Linda Reynolds.
Senator Reynolds was the Minister for Defence Industry back in 2019, when one of her young staffers – 24-year-old Brittany Higgins – alleged she’d been raped by a 23-year-old colleague, a slightly more senior adviser named Bruce Lehrmann.
Justice Michael Lee last month found, on the balance of probabilities, Bruce Lehrmann did rape Brittany Higgins on a couch in Reynolds’ ministerial suite in Parliament House.
It’s the same suite where Reynolds held a meeting with Higgins in the days after the attack.
Reynolds says, at that point, she and her former Chief of Staff, Fiona Brown, had no idea anything untoward had gone on – only that the two young people had returned to the office after hours. Bruce Lehrmann had been immediately told to pack up his things and leave the office – he subsequently lost his job.
The ‘conspiracy’ to silence Brittany Higgins
The Senator has said – and Justice Lee found – that Reynolds and Brown in fact urged Brittany Higgins to take her complaint to the police as soon as they understood the seriousness of the allegation.
Indeed, Fiona Brown has given evidence that as soon as the word rape was mentioned, Reynolds ordered Brown to go to police whether Higgins wanted to or not – and Brown said she refused, wanting to give the young woman the right to choose.
Justice Lee found that in the years since, Higgins’ story has changed.
Back in 2019, Higgins expressed her gratitude for the support she received from Brown, in particular.
But by the time the allegation was aired in an episode of The Project in 2021, it had become – in Higgins’ telling – a full-blown cover-up orchestrated by the former senator and her chief of staff.
Here’s what Brittany Higgins said on the Project about the alleged conspiracy:
“I would try and raise it and I would try and bring it up. And it was always – it always sort of came back to sort of being a ‘me’ issue: ‘And if you can’t deal with it, then – then you can leave’.”
It was a position Higgins maintained in evidence given at the criminal trial and in defamation action brought by Bruce Lehrmann against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.
In 2022 Brittany Higgins got a commonwealth personal injury settlement – more on that later.
But the settlement infuriated Linda Reynolds, who was adamant Higgins hadn’t been mistreated after her disclosure.
Reynolds referred the settlement to the National Anti-Corruption Commission for investigation.
What did Higgins and Sharaz say about Reynolds?
Brittany Higgins and her partner, David Sharaz, took to the social platform now known as X following that referral to criticise Reynolds in a series of tweets.
And, now Reynolds is suing Higgins and Sharaz for defamation in the West Australian Supreme Court.
The Australian’s NSW editor Stephen Rice has been covering the saga for years.
Stephen Rice: “Linda Reynolds is very upset that, she continues to be blamed by Brittany Higgins for allegedly covering up her rape by Bruce Lehrmann.
“Those social media posts were basically along the same lines, the same implication that, that Reynolds in some way, either connived in covering up this rape or that she bullied Higgins in the aftermath of it, or that she was just generally uncaring in the way she handled the rape.”
The influence of David Sharaz
Justice Lee found Brittany Higgins’ changing tune coincided with the arrival in her life of David Sharaz.
In his April 15 judgment, Lee described a number of ways in which he believed Sharaz’s influence had changed things for Higgins.
The judge noted the ‘raw and palpably believable’ evidence from Higgins’ father, in which he said they had a February 2020 phone call in which Higgins told her father she’d been raped.
The judge wrote: “One wonders why a daughter would say such a thing to a clearly loving father absent a genuine belief a sexual assault had taken place. For completeness, it is worth stressing these apparently candid communications with her father might be thought to have cogency because they occurred before the person later charged with the responsibility of “pitching” The Project of the cover-up, Mr Sharaz, came into her life on 29 May 2020, the important Four Corners programme, and the subsequent development of the cover-up narrative.”
Sharaz and Higgins are engaged – he popped the question at Byron Bay’s famous lighthouse on New Year’s Eve in 2022 and shared the moment on Instagram.
Sharaz is a former journalist and political media adviser who worked, most recently, in the radio business in Brisbane. He resigned from his job at Southern Cross Austereo just after receiving the legal threat from Linda Reynolds just over a year ago.
Sharaz – who’s also worked as a TV producer – was a crucial part of the public airing of Brittany Higgins’ story.
Higgins had made it clear to her political bosses and colleagues that she did not want the matter to go further back in 2019.
But by 2021 Sharaz was pitching the story to a The Project in a document titled “Liberal Party Me Too Project pitch” and participated in preliminary interviews with host Lisa Wilkinson and producer Angus Llewelyn.
In that pre-interview, and in subsequent messages with Higgins, Sharaz discussed his apparently close relationship with senior figures in the Labor Party including Katy Gallagher.
Sharaz’ animus towards the Coalition government was also clear.
He described then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison using the c-word and told Lisa Wilkinson he hoped it was ‘Linda Reynolds’ time’ when they were discussing the fallout from the story.
Why didn’t Sharaz give evidence?
Justice Lee was curious about David Sharaz – and he repeatedly asked counsel for Lehrmann and the defendants why they did not call him as a witness in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial.
Justice Lee: “It appears from the communications between Mr. Llewelyn and Mr. Sharaz — who’s like the prophet Elijah in this case. There’s a place for him here at the Passover table, but he never turns up.”
In handing down his findings last month, Justice Lee said the untruths aired by Brittany Higgins fell into two distinct categories.
The first, he said, were understandable: she was a young person processing a traumatic experience, and potentially trying to conceal embarrassing elements of her own behaviour.
But the judge said the second group of untruths – like those told about the alleged cover-up in The Project interview and, later, in court – were in a different category.
And it was that second group on which David Sharaz had the most bearing.
Justice Michael Lee: “The motivations of Mr. Sharaz in selecting the journalist to tell on user story were manifest. And rather than this motive, the cause of some degree of circumspection, Mr. Llewelyn and Ms Wilkinson indicated their willingness to assist in the political use of the allegations, as Ms Higgins and Mr. Sharaz intended.”
Now, David Sharaz has said he can’t go on defending Linda Reynolds’ defamation case – he’s run out of money.
Stephen Rice: “Sharaz has essentially thrown his hands up in the air and thrown himself on the mercy of the court. He’s saying that he just doesn’t have the capacity to fight anymore.
“It’s clear that Brittany Higgins still must have a major part of the $2.4 million that she got from the Commonwealth as compensation for the events following this rape. And I have to stress that most of that award was not because she was raped in a commonwealth office. “Most of it was because she alleged, that she had been mistreated by her bosses, principally, Linda Reynolds, in the aftermath of the of the rape. And as we know from Justice Michael Lee now, that is simply not true.
“So, Linda Reynolds is saying, well, you know, apologise or I will continue to pursue you in this lawsuit.”
Justice Michael Lee found there was no cover-up, no political conspiracy.
Justice Lee: “As we will see when examined properly and without partiality, the cover up allegation was objectively short on facts, but long on speculation and internal inconsistencies. Trying to particularise it during the evidence was like trying to grab a column of smoke.”
Ten had argued in its defence it had never claimed there was a cover-up – only that Higgins had claimed she believed one to exist.
The judge didn’t buy that.
This is how The Project opened its show.
Lisa Wilkinson: “Tonight, claims of rape, roadblocks to a police investigation, and a young woman forced to choose between her career and the pursuit of justice.”
Justice Lee: “In the febrile atmosphere of 2021, many instinctively believed what Ms Higgins asserted about the rape and the subsequent cover up of the crime.
“In advance of any trial where the rape allegation would be examined, the broader allegations of Ms Higgins, resulting her in her in being feted by many, becoming a celebrated speaker at a mass demonstration, becoming nominated for awards, receiving invitations to make a nationally televised speech at the National Press Club, and a book deal with Penguin Random House, apparently worth $325,000.”
Brittany Higgins’ ‘deep regret’
After the judgement was handed down, Brittany Higgins took – once again – to social media to share her reaction.
Here’s part of what she wrote on Instagram.
Brittany Higgins: “Senator Reynolds and Fiona Brown have also been hurt and, for that, I am also sorry. My perceptions and feelings about what happened in the days and weeks after my rape are different from theirs.
“I deeply regret that we have not yet found common ground. I hope we can resolve our differences with a better understanding of each other’s experience.
“I was 24 when I was raped in Parliament House. It has been five years of criminal and civil trials and government inquiries for the truth to finally be heard.
“It is now time to heal.”
Brittany Higgins’ claims of victimisation
In his April 15 judgment, Michael Lee found that Brittany Higgins had told untruths in a claim for loss and damage she made against her former employers – the Commonwealth of Australia.
In her application, Higgins claimed she’d suffered ostracism and victimisation by the former Morrison government after raising her claim of rape.
She said the Commonwealth should be made to pay for its failings, including failing to launch an immediate inquiry and allowing her to be bullied and harassed at work, and pressured not to talk about her rape.
Higgins claimed she would be unable to work in future, and claimed for 40 years of future earnings and superannuation.
In December 2022 the Albanese government settled the claim, paying Higgins $2.4 million in taxpayers’ money.
Claire Harvey: “The Commonwealth deed was a separate legal negotiation between Brittany Higgins and the Commonwealth. It was agreed not long after Labor had come to power and there were suggestions at the time that this was Labor just seeking to make this whole matter go away. But Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown were not allowed to be represented at that negotiation, were they?”
Stephen Rice: “Not only were they not allowed to be represented but the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, told Linda Reynolds that he would refuse to pay any of her legal costs if she even turned up at this hearing. It was extraordinary.”
In August 2023, the Daily Mail published a story on what happened after the settlement.
The story included this: “Following the settlement, Ms Higgins took Mr Sharaz on a holiday to the Maldives, rented a house on the Gold Coast, and then set up a discretionary investment trust in February – which protects her assets from any future lawsuits.”
Linda Reynolds was very interested in that paragraph and now she’s citing the story in a new legal action she’s taking in the West Australian Supreme Court.
Reynolds’ claims about Higgins’ trust
Reynolds is going after the trust – asking a judge to set the trust aside so she can access any assets still held by Higgins, if she wins the defamation trial.
Stephen Rice: “There’s a whole bunch of different proceedings that could have led Brittany Higgins into a position where she might owe people lots of money. Obviously you have this case by Linda Reynolds, where Higgins might have to pay out significant damages and costs.
“It’s possible that Brittany Higgins’ publisher might want a refund of advances that it paid to her for her book, which she ever published and perhaps never will.
‘And of course, there was also a possibility at one stage that Bruce Lehrmann himself might have sued her, especially if he’d won this case, against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.
“So there are all sorts of reasons that might have motivated her, you know, over a year ago to set up a trust to protect assets that she held from being discovered by anybody seeking to pursue them.”
Reynolds has also alleged the trust was “made with the intent to defraud future creditors”.
Higgins has not had an opportunity to respond to that allegation, and nothing has yet been proven.
But it demonstrates Reynolds is not going to let this matter drop.
Stephen Rice: “No, she’s definitely not going to. She’s made it very clear that she’s going to continue with this case. Unless Brittany Higgins just fronts up and says I was wrong – and it can’t be too difficult to do that, surely, given that Justice Michael Lee has now stated in his judgement definitively that there wasn’t a cover up, that Linda Reynolds, in fact, cared very much for what happened to her, her young employee in the days after that incident and was insistent that, that she go to the police. So there’s just no question now that the allegations made against Reynolds were false.”
Will the Commonwealth try to get its money back?
Claire Harvey: “What’s the likelihood that the Commonwealth would try and get that money back?”
Stephen Rice: “I think it’s pretty unlikely. There’s certainly a legal possibility that the Commonwealth could come after Higgins if she admitted that the allegations were false, because a large part of that settlement was based on this idea that she hadn’t been given any help by her bosses after the after the rape, and indeed, that there’d been this attempt to cover it up that, that they just hadn’t cared for her, that they’d failed in their duty of care to her.
“Now, theoretically, the Commonwealth could go: ‘Look, we want our money back’, but the reality is that it would be very difficult for anyone to untangle the web of that settlement, because undoubtedly there was some part of the settlement that was legitimate.
“She was raped by a fellow government employee in a in a government office where she neither of them should have been allowed to be there.
“So she would have been entitled to some money, even though the bulk of it was on this basis that she wasn’t cared for properly.
“I think it’s very unlikely that anybody would try to untangle that. I think it is very unlikely that any government, would be willing to try to get money back from a rape victim. So I don’t think she should be worried about that. I think she should just come out and say: ‘I was wrong. I’m sorry’.
After the federal court judgement, Stephen Rice you wrote a piece of analysis in which he said it’s now time for both sides to just accept this result.
Stephen Rice: “I wish they would. Bruce Lehrmann has announced that he’s investigating the possibility of an appeal. That would be very costly. It’s difficult to imagine that he’s going to be able to raise the funds to do that. Justice Lee delivered a very thorough finding on the question of whether or not Bruce Lehrmann and raped Brittany Higgins.
“And his finding that on the balance of probabilities, Lehrmann did rape Higgins just seems unlikely to be able to be challenged in any appeal.”
This is an edited transcript of our free daily podcast The Front. Listen wherever you get podcasts.
