Fiona Brown on the Brittany Higgins-Bruce Lehrmann saga: I was shot by the #MeToo ‘firing squad’
The former PM’s director of operations reveals how a bid to deflect Labor claims of a rape cover up led him down a catastrophic path.
The political staffer at the centre of the Brittany Higgins rape allegations has revealed how she was made to take the fall for the Morrison government as it sought to deflect Labor’s accusations of a cover-up – a catastrophic path she says culminated in the then-prime minister misleading parliament.
Scott Morrison’s director of operations, Fiona Brown, has told The Weekend Australian her boss misled the House when he claimed, falsely, to have spoken to her about Ms Higgins’ claim that her job had been threatened in the wake of her allegations.
In her first-ever interview, Ms Brown, who was chief of staff to then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds, says her career was destroyed in the aftermath of Ms Higgins’ claim she had told Ms Brown she was raped in the minister’s office but pressured not to report it.
It comes as Senator Reynolds claimed Labor ministers Katy Gallagher and Penny Wong conceded to her they knew about Ms Higgins’ rape allegations before they were made public, hours after Senator Gallagher told the Senate she had no prior knowledge.
Ms Brown claims Ms Higgins told a series of lies about the way she handled her allegations against Bruce Lehrmann, and that Ms Higgins turned her into a “villain”.
Ms Brown said the most senior figures in the Prime Minister’s Office failed to support her after she was wrongly accused by Ms Higgins of failing to help her, a claim weaponised by Labor to attack Mr Morrison. “It all becomes about the survival of the PM,” Ms Brown said. “You are invisible, marginalised, isolated … no one wanted to know.”
On February 18, 2021, Anthony Albanese asked Mr Morrison during question time whether he had spoken to Ms Brown about Ms Higgins’ claim that her job had been threatened. Mr Morrison replied that he had.
Ms Brown said that was not true and after that question time, the then-prime minister had approached her and said “we’ve spoken, haven’t we”.
Even worse, she said, was the accusation she first heard on The Project: that she had helped cover up a rape. “The worst thing you can say about a woman is to say she walked past another woman’s rape,” she said. “And that interview with Lisa Wilkinson framed me as a rape apologist.”
Ms Brown, who has quit her role as a political staffer, says she can only guess at why Ms Higgins chose to make these claims. “She had to have a villain – apart from the rape in the office story – on the political conspiracy side that story needed a villain,” Ms Brown said. “She needed to present stuff as facts in order to justify or convey her feelings – and that’s why she did this to me – so I was the villain.”
Approached for comment on Friday, a spokesperson for Ms Higgins referred The Weekend Australian to the court transcript from the Lehrmann trial for Ms Higgins’ statements about Ms Brown’s involvement, noting that her evidence was given under oath.
Among the claims made by Ms Brown during more than six hours of interview were:
• That Senator Reynolds told her to report Ms Higgins’ comment that “I remember him on top of me” to police, but that she refused because the young woman had not made any complaint or allegation of rape or assault;
• That she personally walked Ms Higgins down to the police office in Parliament House at the first indication from the young staffer that some kind of sexual activity had occurred;
• That she never saw nor asked for CCTV footage from the night despite Ms Higgins’ repeated claims that she had;
• That no one in government came to her after The Project interview to ask if it was true that Ms Higgins told her she had been raped;
• That no one in the Prime Minister’s office publicly supported her version of events with staff fearful of pushing against the #MeToo movement;
• That work colleagues ostracised her after the allegations; and
• That she was devastated by Mr Morrison’s apology to Ms Higgins in parliament “for the terrible things that took place here”, which was made without having spoken to her and without having taken legal advice.
Ms Higgins alleged she was raped by fellow staffer Bruce Lehrmann on a couch in Senator Reynolds’ office in the early hours of Saturday, March 23, 2019.
Ms Brown, then chief of staff on a three-week contract, effectively “on loan” from the Prime Minister’s Office, spoke to both Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann about the incident after reports of a security breach involving the pair accessing the office after hours.
It was only two years later that Ms Higgins would go public with her claim she was raped, leading to accusations by Labor that Ms Brown and Senator Reynolds had put pressure on her to stay silent, fearing the impact of a scandal before an election.
Both Ms Brown and Senator Reynolds have steadfastly denied the allegations, saying Ms Higgins made no allegation of rape or assault and that when she ultimately hinted at some kind of sexual activity they immediately arranged for her to talk to police.
Ms Brown has revealed previously unheard details of the case to The Weekend Australian.
But in the week following Ms Higgins’ appearance on The Project, the Labor opposition was using every opportunity in question time to pursue both Senator Reynolds and Ms Brown, who had by now returned to her role in the prime minister's office.
On February 18, 2021, Mr Albanese, opposition leader at the time, asked Mr Morrison about Ms Higgins’ claim that “a current senior staffer to the prime minister, and Ms Higgins’s former chief of staff – the same person – ‘continually made me feel as if my ongoing employment would be jeopardised if I proceeded any further with the matter’”.
“Has the prime minister raised Ms Higgins’s clear statement with his staff member?” he asked.
“There have been many conversations over the course of this week,” Mr Morrison began, before Mr Albanese, now the Prime Minister, interjected: “It can’t be a clearer question. The question just goes to whether the prime minister has asked his senior staff member about the declaration made by Ms Higgins?”
Mr Morrison replied: “Perhaps the leader of the opposition didn’t understand me. What I’m saying is I have had these conversations with the member of staff. I said there have been many conversations. I’m happy to indicate I have had conversations about the support provided by the member of my staff now.
“I have discussed with her those matters and the support provided, and she indeed has indicated to me some appreciation that was also provided to her at the time in the messages that were sent to her.”
Ms Brown told The Weekend Australian that at the time Mr Morrison gave that answer she had not had any conversation with him on the issue.
“I remember him coming back after question time on that Thursday … and for the first time (after The Project) he said: ‘How are you?’” Ms Brown recalled.
“He had never sat down or even walked by and had a proper discussion with me when this issue exploded. The most discussion I ever had with him was in that moment. That was the extent of it, a two-minute conversation – ‘Hi Fiona, how are you?’ I said, ‘oh, it’s pretty tough’.
“And I apologised to him. I said, ‘I’m sorry they’re using me to get to you. I’m really sorry about that. But she never, never told me’. And then the only thing he says in relation to this matter ever, is: ‘We’ve spoken’. That’s it. ‘We’ve spoken, haven’t we’.
“Could you imagine how it felt? I thought he genuinely came by to check how I was. I hadn’t really heard question time. And then when he came by, I was like, ‘oh my God, he’s asking how I am’. And then that comment triggered me and I went, huh?”
The import of the prime minister’s comments crystallised when Ms Brown read Hansard and saw what her boss had said in the chamber. She made a note to herself, given that he had not, at the time he gave that answer in question time, met with her about these events. “I was devastated, I felt grubby,” she said. “That was it. I realised at that moment that I was collateral damage.”
Ms Brown said she told many people in the Prime Minister’s Office, including chief of staff John Kunkel, that Mr Morrison had never met with her nor discussed these issues. “I said to many people, why haven’t I been given the courtesy?” she said. “He hasn’t heard from me. I’ve given you guys everything. How was it that Brittany Higgins could get a meeting and I couldn’t?”
Asked about this conversation Mr Kunkel did not deny Ms Brown’s version. “Fiona Brown is someone of unimpeachable integrity and honesty and she displayed that in her handling of this very difficult situation,” he said on Friday. “She has carried an enormous burden through these recent years.”
Mr Morrison told The Weekend Australian: “I understood my statement to be accurate to the House. I regularly saw Ms Brown in the office and would ask how she was going. Specifics of matters relating to the incident were the subject of many other processes that I did not seek to interfere with.”
Mr Morrison said he accepted that Ms Brown might have had a different expectation about what such a conversation should have entailed, hence her recollection.
“I had not sat down with Ms Brown over these issues in the same way as I had with Ms Higgins,” he said. “I note the latter meeting was arranged at Ms Higgins’ request. I meant no disrespect or insensitivity to Ms Brown, as there were many competing issues I had to address as prime minister. Ms Brown continued to do an outstanding job in my office during a very stressful period and I am very appreciative of her contribution and professionalism.”
Ms Brown said that, on the weekend before The Project program, having been alerted that it was about to air, two senior staff members were assigned to ask her about her interactions with Ms Higgins and Mr Lehrmann.
She said she showed them her contemporaneous notes and relevant texts. “I showed them everything,” she said.
But she said that at no point after The Project aired was she ever asked if Ms Higgins had told her she had been raped. The program made serious allegations against Ms Brown but she was told not to respond.
“I didn’t prosecute my defence in the media because in many ways, if I wanted to keep my job, I needed to allow the press office to do their thing,” she said.
She wanted to take legal action against Ten for defamation but was told by people within the prime minister’s office that a legal claim would just make the story bigger. “They didn’t think it was a good idea,” she said.
She added they told her: “It’ll run out of steam in two weeks.”
Ms Brown said the #MeToo movement had become such a powerful political force that not even Coalition members were willing to question Ms Higgins’ story. “No one wanted to go against the movement,” she says.
Under political pressure following The Project interview, Mr Morrison asked the head of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Phil Gaetjens, to investigate which staff in his office knew about the allegation, when they became aware and what they were told.
Ms Brown said the inquiry was “a bit like the Spanish Inquisition – it was really inappropriate”. She was interviewed by the office’s deputy secretary, Stephanie Foster, but no recording or verbatim notes were made of the interview. Ms Brown was presented with a statutory declaration which she refused to sign. “I felt like I was being stitched up,” she said.
The Gaetjens inquiry was suspended when Mr Lehrmann was charged and never issued a finding before the Coalition lost government last year.
Ms Brown’s position in the Prime Minister’s Office was restricted, her role downgraded.
“I had people in my office say, I wouldn’t want to be you; I’d hate to be you,” she said.
“No one wanted to be Fiona Brown. It was marginalisation, it was ostracisation; they were hurting too. But nevertheless, at the end of the day, I was a staff member. I asked for help. And then nothing would happen.”
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