Linda Reynolds insists leaks weren’t intended to diminish Brittany Higgins’ rape allegations
Linda Reynolds said she sent a “catty” text about Brittany Higgins to Bruce Lehrmann’s lawyer because she was annoyed Ms Higgins had taken one of her jackets
Linda Reynolds has steadfastly denied any of her leaks, correspondence or interviews about the Brittany Higgins saga were in any way meant to diminish her former staffer’s rape allegations, as the faced vigorous cross-examination by Ms Higgins’s lawyer, Rachael Young.
Senator Reynolds’s fourth day in the witness stand as part of her defamation claim against Ms Higgins also saw her grilled about a “catty” message she sent to Bruce Lehrmann’s former lawyer Steve Whybrow in which she mocked Ms Higgins for dressing like Kate Middleton as she gave testimony during Mr Lehrmann’s rape trial.
Ms Young is trying to establish a truth defence against Senator Reynolds’s claim that Ms Higgins defamed her in social media posts that the senator says implied she had mishandled Ms Higgins’ rape allegations.
Ms Young quizzed her on various communications between her and The Australian’s Janet Albrechtsen, Channel 7’s Liam Bartlett, and Mr Whybrow as she tried to build her case.
Senator Reynolds was steadfast that her intent was to highlight issues with the actions of the commonwealth and, in particular, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus in their handling of Ms Higgins’s compensation claim. Ms Higgins received $2.445m in compensation in December 2022.
She denied ever trying to assist Mr Lehrmann, even as Ms Young tendered a series of text messages between Senator Reynolds and Mr Whybrow sent during the Lehrmann rape trial.
Among those was what she described as a catty message about Ms Higgins dressing like Kate Middleton during her rape trial testimony.
She said she was annoyed at the time she sent Mr Whybrow the message, blaming it in part on Ms Higgins’s decision to take Senator Reynolds’s black and white Carla Zampatti jacket with her when she left Parliament House after her alleged rape.
“It was me being unduly annoyed by the fact she had stolen my jacket,” Senator Reynolds said.
Ms Young asked if it was understandable for Ms Higgins to take the jacket that night, given she had just been allegedly raped by Mr Lehrmann and had been found in a state of undress undress. “If she’d returned it, I would have no problem,” Senator Reynolds replied.
“If she just returned it and said I put it on because I was cold or whatever else, that would’ve been fine but I never got it back.”
She said Ms Higgins had made her clothing “a thing”. “She is entitled to wear whatever she wanted, but what annoyed me was I perceived it as imitating Kate Middleton and liking suits,” she said. “I’m not saying it makes great rational sense but it did annoy me.”
The court also heard how Senator Reynolds had passed on three confidential documents related to that compensation claim to Albrechtsen. She agreed with Ms Young that Albrechtsen was an accomplished and experienced journalist who had a wide readership in the nation’s major newspaper, but denied the suggestion that she chose Ms Albrechtsen because of her expectation that she would provide favourable coverage of the senator’s position on the compensation claim.
“I picked her because she was the most balanced. There was no agreement or anything that she would be favourable,” she said.
Senator Reynolds has been critical of the commonwealth’s handling of the compensation claim, arguing she was frozen out of the process, and she said she leaked the documents to highlight those concerns about the process.
“I was incredibly angry, because I could see the Attorney-General of Australia was stitching me up. So absolutely, I did want … Ms Albrechtsen to know, and I wanted the public to know.”
Asked by Ms Young if she was pleased by Albrechtsen’s subsequent story because she wanted to raise question marks about the process by which Ms Higgins obtained her $2.445m settlement from the commonwealth, Senator Reynolds said it was “the other way around”.
“It was about the way the commonwealth dealt with the claim. I had no issue with Ms Higgins in this process at all,” she said.
“I was very clear this was about the Attorney-General and how he had, I believe, corruptly manipulated the law to muzzle me.”
Ms Young also questioned Senator Reynolds over an interview she gave with Bartlett for Channel 7’s Spotlight program in 2023, where at one point she was asked about whether the compensation payment had been made for “a crime that may not have been committed”.
The program showed Senator Reynolds answering “Yes”.
Under cross-examination, the senator said she “certainly wasn’t referring to the rape”.
She will finish her cross-examination on Friday, ahead of returning to Canberra for the resumption of parliament.
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