Brittany Higgins, the hit and the day I broke down: Linda Reynolds
Linda Reynolds, the former minister at the centre of the Brittany Higgins rape scandal, says media identities ruthlessly exploited her young staffer for political and personal gain | WATCH
The former Liberal cabinet minister at the centre of the Brittany Higgins rape scandal says she was the target of an orchestrated plot to bring down herself and the Morrison government, claiming senior Labor and media identities ruthlessly exploited her young staffer for political and personal gain.
Former defence minister Linda Reynolds has broken her two-year silence, alleging the rape case was used as a political weapon and acknowledging she was targeted “to the point where I broke”.
“What happened should be of concern to all Australians, because this was clearly a political hit job on the government of the day to bring down the defence minister,” Senator Reynolds said in an exclusive interview with The Weekend Australian.
Senator Reynolds made it clear she respected Ms Higgins’ right to tell her story.
“Just because it didn’t match with my recollection of events and my story, it doesn’t invalidate her right to tell her story, which she has,” she said.
“Brittany Higgins, I believe, was used in this situation in a way that should only ever have been an issue for the police and the justice system.”
Among the revelations made by Senator Reynolds during more than four hours of interview were:
• That Ms Higgins’ claims in her TV interview with Lisa Wilkinson bore so little resemblance to what Senator Reynolds had actually said or done that “it was like a bomb went off in my head”;
• That being accused of covering up the rape of a young woman was so personally devastating that at one point, her health already failing, she collapsed on the bathroom floor, “broken, sobbing and inconsolable”;
• Why she called Ms Higgins a “lying cow” – and why she paid up over the gibe;
• That when she met with Ms Higgins nine days after the incident in Senator Reynolds’ office but before she said it included being raped, the young staffer was “apologetic” and “embarrassed” about the incident.
• That then prime minister Scott Morrison apologised to her privately, having rebuked her publicly;
• How she was betrayed by a Liberal staffer while recuperating on medical leave, declaring: “I was hung out to dry over a bowl of pasta.”
Unable to speak previously because of the criminal case against Bruce Lehrmann, the man Ms Higgins accused of raping her in Senator Reynolds’ office, and barred by the Albanese government from giving evidence in the multimillion-dollar civil case successfully brought by Ms Higgins against the commonwealth, the former defence minister is now ready to tell her side of the story.
“It’s been the hardest two years of my life, without question,” Senator Reynolds said. “I haven’t been able to speak and my chief of staff and others haven’t been able to tell their story. And we have a very different story.”
Ms Higgins has been highly critical of Senator Reynolds’ handling of the alleged assault, claiming the minister and her staff failed to support her in the aftermath or properly investigate the incident. But an internal department email obtained by The Weekend Australian casts fresh doubt on that claim.
On March 29, 2019, a senior official of the Department of Finance, responsible for dealing with the welfare of parliamentary staff, concluded that “appropriate” steps were being taken to protect Ms Higgins.
Senator Reynolds’ chief of staff, Fiona Brown, had contacted the officer to ensure all necessary support was being given to the 24-year-old staffer, although at that point, on Ms Higgins’ own evidence, she had not yet disclosed a sexual assault.
An email from assistant secretary Lauren Barons sets out the steps Ms Brown had already taken, including, notifying Ms Higgins that, “should she choose to, she is able to pursue a complaint, including a complaint made to police” and that Ms Brown had “made it very clear that if she requires assistance in making a complaint, you would be willing to support her”.
Ms Barons said: “The steps you have taken are appropriate … Ultimately any decision as to whether to lodge a police report or pursue any other form of complaint relating to this matter would be a personal choice of the person involved.”
Senator Reynolds said that when she met with Ms Higgins on April 1, 2019, the young staffer was “apologetic” and “embarrassed” about the incident. Senator Reynolds is emphatic that Ms Higgins did not at any point say she had been raped or assaulted.
However, suspecting something sexual might have occurred, she and Ms Brown suggested the young woman should speak to police. Ms Brown then took Ms Higgins to see Australian Federal Police officers stationed in the parliament building.
“Brittany did that on the Monday (April 1), but she came back to me and said that, you know, it was helpful but ‘I’m not gonna pursue it further’,” Senator Reynolds said.
“So I said, okay, well, whatever you need.”
Three days later the AFP advised that Ms Higgins had got back to them to say she would make a complaint.
Senator Reynolds believed police were following up the complaint, and said she offered Ms Higgins support and various options to continue in her job. Ms Higgins chose to campaign with the minister in Perth and was invited to remain working for her after the election.
“She declined. She thanked me for being a great boss. She gave me flowers, and then she went to Michaelia Cash’s office, on a promotion,” Senator Reynolds said.
In the nearly two years that followed, Senator Reynolds was unaware Ms Higgins had decided to delay giving a formal statement to police and was instead making contact with journalists to tell her story publicly.
But she became aware something was afoot two weeks before the bombshell Wilkinson interview.
A friend, late Labor senator Kimberley Kitching, had come up to her in the chamber.
Senator Reynolds said: “She said, ‘Linda, I’ve got something to tell you. I’m so aghast. We (Labor) know about an incident that happened in your office two years ago. We’ve got it and it’s going to be weaponised’. And that was the word she used: ‘weaponised’. So she didn’t use Brittany’s name but obviously I knew what she was talking about.
“I said, ‘What? Why would you do that to a young woman? Why would you do that?’. Kimberly agreed. She said, ‘I’m so sorry’.”
Senator Reynolds had been expecting questions in parliament on the incident. Instead, two weeks later, Ms Higgins appeared in an interview with Wilkinson on Ten’s The Project “and what unfolded was the whole firestorm”.
Senator Reynolds said she watched the interview with incredulity turning to horror.
“It was just like a bomb went off in my head,” she said. “It was like, ‘What is Lisa saying? What is this conversation about me and about Fiona?’. Because almost everything that was said did not accord with my recollection of what had happened two years previously.
“I actually couldn’t believe what I was hearing and seeing. It was just such a shock. Being accused of covering up the rape of a young woman for political purposes. It was like a stake through my heart. I mean, it literally was like, my head had exploded.”
The next day she was publicly rebuked by then prime minister Scott Morrison for not informing him of the allegations.
Senator Reynolds told The Weekend Australian that Mr Morrison expressed regret to her, in private, the following day.
“He realised that it was never my position to tell anybody about Brittany Higgins’ story,” she said.
Senator Reynolds insisted that throughout she simply wanted to give Ms Higgins agency over her own actions.
“The thing about agency, you know, is it’s her story, it’s hers to tell,” she said. “It was never my story to tell. Ultimately, you can’t force someone to do something. And particularly without an allegation of rape.”
Senator Reynolds believes Ms Higgins was exploited by Labor for advantage in the run-up to the election; by journalists for personal gain and self-aggrandisement, and; by political activists “who in the MeToo zeitgeist had found their perfect vehicle to elevate the movement”.
“This was clearly, clearly, a very well-orchestrated political hit to take down the minister of the defence of the day, and also the government,” she said.
“Brittany’s story was perfect for the MeToo movement and for those of my colleagues in the Senate who were trying to bring down the government.”
Senator Reynolds is scathing of sections of the media, particularly Wilkinson. “I looked at (the interview) and thought: ‘who on Earth would put a clearly distressed young woman on national TV talking about an issue before she raised it with the police?’,” she said. “But as Brittany Higgins has said: it became not about her, but about journalists jockeying for awards and the MeToo movement.
“What was The Project thinking? Putting a woman as distressed as Brittany Higgins was on national TV before she’d even talked to the police again. Putting her outside Parliament House in front of thousands of people. I mean, how is that not exploitation?”
Senator Reynolds’ frustration over Ms Higgins’ allegations about her own role would come back to haunt her when The Australian revealed she had called Ms Higgins a “lying cow” in an open-plan area of her parliamentary office after Ms Higgins went public with her claims.
The insinuation was that Senator Reynolds was questioning the truth of the rape allegation, but she says she was reacting in shock to the allegations – that she was hearing for the first time – that she and Ms Brown had failed to support Ms Higgins and even brought her into Senator Reynolds’ office knowing Ms Higgins had claimed a rape had taken place there.
Senator Reynolds had to pay sizeable damages to Ms Higgins, out of her own pocket. “I was paying for it to go away,” she said. “I was in no state to defend myself.”
As publicity around the case exploded in the wake of the Wilkinson interview and an article by news.com.au’s Samantha Maiden, Labor zeroed in on the Liberal minister who now stood accused of covering up the rape of a young woman for political purposes.
Senators Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher led the charge.
“I was accused of covering up a rape day after day after day after day,” Senator Reynolds said. “They were asking me questions that legally and ethically I knew I couldn’t answer. Ms Higgins had said she was going to make a fresh complaint to the AFP and that is where it should always have been. And every Australian should really think about the issue. What do they want from their politicians?”
In a joint statement issued on Friday, Senator Wong and Senator Gallagher said: “One of Senator Reynolds’ staff alleged she was raped in Senator Reynolds’ ministerial office. The record shows that Senator Wong and Senator Gallagher asked reasonable questions of the then Morrison government about how they responded to those serious allegations. Many of these questions remain unanswered. These new claims from Senator Reynolds are completely rejected and reveal a deep lack of respect for the autonomy of her former staff member who made these allegations.”
Mr Lehrmann’s trial on rape charges was aborted in October 2022 due to juror misconduct. Mr Lehrmann pleaded not guilty and has at all times denied the allegations. The DPP has now withdrawn the charges.
Senator Reynolds has taken legal action against Ms Higgins’ boyfriend, David Sharaz, who she alleges defamed her in two tweets sent last year, and who she claims has subjected her to “harassing and highly distressing trolling on social media”.
On Friday Ms Higgins told The Weekend Australian: “I have already publicly accepted apologies from Senator Reynolds offered in the wake of my allegations becoming public both in the Senate and through the media in 2021.
“I have accepted Senator Reynolds’ apology following an incident where she publicly defamed me by likening me to a barnyard animal.
“I’ve went through three reviews during the Morrison government tenure, a criminal trial, a mediation process with the commonwealth and now I’m engaging with an independent inquiry into the criminal trial.
“The facts have been well-established. Any revisionist history offered by my former employer at this time is deeply hurtful and needlessly cruel.”
Higgins on Saturday responded to diary notes of her contact with big names in media and political circles being published in The Weekend Australian.
I took a photo of an old page in my diary on the 7th of July 2021.
— Brittany Higgins (@BrittHiggins_) February 17, 2023
It is now being referenced in an article in the Australian.
This is the third time private images, texts and WhatsApps from my phone have been published by this particular news outlet. (1/3)
As the fallout from these events continues, Senator Reynolds wants Australians to focus on the ethics of those political opponents who targeted her relentlessly, day after day, in the Senate.
“One of the bigger issues now, on reflection, two years later, is who do we want to be as senators and as parliamentarians representing the nation?” she said. “I’ve had to think a lot about that … whether I could physically and mentally stay. Because what this showed me is that even the strongest people have a breaking point and Labor found mine. It was calculated; it was deliberate.
“I tried to be unfailingly polite and answer the questions as much as I could, respecting her (Ms Higgins’) agency, as I said time and time again. But ultimately, like crows pecking on the carcass until it’s gone, they just kept at me, every day, they just kept diminishing me.”
She described at one point collapsing up on the bathroom floor of her Senate office before question time. “I was just broken. I was sobbing. I was inconsolable,” she said. Her friend and ministerial next-door neighbour, Anne Ruston, realised she was in trouble. “Anne – my saving angel – bolted in … and so she just immediately took charge. She went out. I think she contacted Simon Birmingham, the (Senate) leader. It was so bad. I literally cannot remember whether I did actually get up for question time that day or I didn’t.”
Senator Reynolds had long suffered a heart problem that caused her heart rate and blood pressure to spiral. She said the stress of the personal attacks was exacerbating the condition causing heart spasms and pains in her chest.
The then defence minister had been due to deliver a major address to the National Press Club on February 24 but the day before ran into then health minister Greg Hunt who thought she looked so ill he immediately called his own doctor to come and see her. “So he came up, took one look at me, took my vitals and he said, I’m ringing Canberra Hospital,” she said. “You’re going down. Anyway, we went down there and we couldn’t get in.”
She finally saw a cardiologist late that night. “I had the most horrific night. I didn’t get any sleep, and I was in pain,” she said.
Senator Reynolds was admitted to hospital and announced she was taking medical leave for a heart condition. But there would be no escape from the media. One night, visiting a friend in Goulburn, the pair went out for a meal with a colleague at Italian restaurant La Casa Italiana.
There were a handful of patrons and one, she noticed, was a staff member of then treasurer Josh Frydenberg. “While still there, I got a message that a journalist had been alerted that I was wining and dining out and about in Goulburn,” she said.
It was pretty clear the staffer had tipped off the media.
“That is what hurt, one of our own had thrown me to the wolves over a bowl of pasta,” she said.
