Senator Linda Reynolds sobs: my guilt over Kimberley Kitching death
Linda Reynolds has claimed she feels guilty for Labor ‘bullying to death’ the late senator Kimberley Kitching, in an extraordinary end to the Liberal senator’s testimony.
Former defence minister Linda Reynolds has broken down in tears and claimed she feels guilty for Labor “bullying to death” the late senator Kimberley Kitching, in an extraordinary end to the Liberal senator’s testimony in her defamation court battle against ex-staffer Brittany Higgins.
Senator Reynolds sobbed as she told the West Australian Supreme Court on Friday she believed she had set in train the events that led to Kitching’s sudden and unexpected death in March 2022 at the age of 52.
She said she felt “extreme guilt” over her decision to reveal to Labor frontbenchers Penny Wong and Katy Gallagher that Kitching had warned her that Labor was aware of Ms Higgins’ allegation she was raped inside Parliament House.
How the court proceedings unfolded on Friday
“I believe what I said to them caused them to bully her to death,” Ms Reynolds said under cross-examination from Ms Higgins’ lawyer Rachael Young SC, who is leading the ex-staffer’s defence against the senator’s claim that Ms Higgins had defamed her in social media posts.
“If I hadn’t revealed her confidence to me to Senator Wong and Senator Gallagher, that’s when (Kitching) got angry with me and furious with me,” Senator Reynolds continued. “That’s what led to her being ostracised by Labor. It’s my guilt, Ms Young, I should never have said that.”
The Liberal senator said “everyone” could see how angry Kitching was with her after she revealed that her Labor counterpart had privately warned her in the Senate chamber about the then opposition’s plans to “rain hell” on her and the government over Ms Higgins’ rape.
“She was so angry with me and she was losing weight, she was getting angrier,” Senator Reynolds said. “I might not be a doctor, Ms Young, but I carry the guilt of that, of telling the senators which led to that.”
Senator Reynolds has now finished her days-long cross-examination in the case and will be free to go to Canberra for next week’s parliamentary sitting.
Ms Young had just produced a copy of a letter – first reported by The Australian in 2022 – in which Kitching rubbished Senator Reynolds’ assertion that the Labor senator had warned her that the Higgins story was about to land.
She also produced tweets by the late senator ridiculing Senator Reynolds, including one in which she said then prime minister Scott Morrison had “half-sacked her for denigrating an alleged victim of crime as a lying cow” and said “he should finish the job and axe the turkey by Christmas”.
Senators Wong and Gallagher, who are among Anthony Albanese’s closest confidantes and his highest ranking ministers, declined to comment on Friday.
In June last year, Senator Gallagher said she had been given warning “that there was going to be some public reporting that a young woman making serious allegations about events that had occurred in a minister’s office” but that she did not do anything with that information.
“I was clear about that to Senator Reynolds, when she raised these concerns in the committee,” Senator Gallagher said.
“When she raised it I explained what had happened, but I categorically rejected — and you see that in the footage of the committee – I categorically rejected the assertion she was putting, which was that we had chosen to weaponise that information weeks ahead of being told about it.”
Federal Court judge Michael Lee ruled in April this year in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial against the Ten Network and presenter Lisa Wilkinson that, on the balance of probabilities, Mr Lehrmann had raped Ms Higgins. Mr Lehrmann has launched an appeal against the decision.
Senator Reynolds’ testimony on Friday came days after she briefly described how she believed the Higgins saga had led to Senator Kitching’s death. Senator Reynolds was giving her evidence-in-chief at the time, and her lawyer Martin Bennett opted not to push the matter further.
The senator’s tears capped an already dramatic day on the stand, with Ms Young spending the day grilling her over what she knew at the time she first met Ms Higgins after her rape.
Senator Reynolds has insisted she had no idea that Ms Higgins may have been sexually assaulted when she met the young staffer in the office where Ms Higgins was raped nine days earlier.
In what was one of the most intense exchanges during Senator Reynolds’ week on the stand, Ms Young repeatedly challenged the senator over what she knew at the time she met Ms Higgins on April 1, 2019.
Ms Young took Senator Reynolds to a report given to her by the Department of Parliamentary Services before that meeting with Ms Higgins, which detailed: how Ms Higgins had been found partially undressed in the senator’s office and seemed intoxicated; that Mr Lehrmann had left before her “in a hurried manner”; and a conversation Senator Reynolds had before the meeting with her chief of staff Fiona Brown in which Ms Brown said Ms Higgins had told her that Mr Lehrmann “had been on top of me”.
Senator Reynolds also knew that Ms Higgins had been referred to both the Employee Assistance Program counselling service and the 1800 RESPECT hotline, and that Ms Higgins’ father had travelled from the Gold Coast to Canberra to support his daughter. Senator Reynolds had also been pushing for the incident to be referred to the Australian Federal Police for investigation.
“All of those circumstances suggest, don’t they, that you knew that sexual activity without consent had occurred in your office in the early hours of 23 March 2019?” Ms Young asked.
Senator Reynolds replied: “That is not correct”.
Establishing that Senator Reynolds knew, or at least suspected, that Ms Higgins may have been raped at the time she sat down with the young staffer on April 1, 2019, to discuss the events from nine days earlier is a key part of Ms Higgins’ defence.
Ms Higgins is arguing a truth defence against Senator Reynolds’ claim that her former employee defamed the senator by implying that she had mishandled Ms Higgins’ rape claim and had harassed her.
Senator Reynolds had repeatedly insisted that she had no suspicion at that point that Ms Higgins may have been sexually assaulted at that time.
In response to questions from Ms Young, Senator Reynolds said she was pleased to hear in the April 1, 2019, meeting with Ms Higgins that the staffer planned to go to the doctor the next day.
“You understood a doctor may be able to assist Ms Higgins with, for example, any issues that might arise from having unprotected sexual intercourse?,” Ms Young asked.
Senator Reynolds replied, “That was absolutely one of the options, yes, of course.”
Ms Young: “You were old enough and experienced enough … to know if someone is saying ‘I was intoxicated to the point of memory loss’ and ‘he was on top of me’ and ‘I want to go and see a doctor tomorrow’, that that raised a suspicion for you that there was sexual activity that occurred on 23 March 2019 without Ms Higgins’ consent?”
Senator Reynolds replied, “No it did not”.
Ms Young also accused Senator Reynolds of “shutting Ms Higgins down” during that meeting from talking about what had happened to her, a claim that the senator also denied. Asked by Ms Young if she had told Ms Higgins during that meeting that she was “not the right person to have this conversation with”, Senator Reynolds said she said something similar to that.
“I said something like ‘I’m your employer, I’m not the right person to be having discussions with you on intimate matters’,” she said. “I’m not a trained counsellor.”
She said that, if she knew then what she knew now about Ms Higgins’ rape, she would not have had that meeting in her office.
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