This is the statement of claim that lawyers for Brittany Higgins didn’t want us at The Australian to see. They didn’t want us to report it, to analyse what Linda Reynolds set out in her defamation claim against Higgins in the West Australian Supreme Court.
Fear not. We’re fighting objections by the Higgins team to us accessing all the documents filed in this litigation. I filed further submissions with the WA Supreme Court on Monday. The wheels of justice move slowly – court orders are currently not due until the end of this month.
In the meantime, my intrepid colleague Ellie Dudley got hold of a copy of the statement of claim current as at June 4.
No wonder the Higgins team tried to block us from seeing it.
It is an extraordinary read. For the first time in one document are allegations of what Reynolds calls “the Plan” – a carefully orchestrated, pre-meditated political hit job where Higgins and Sharaz used allegations of a rape and a political cover-up “as a weapon to inflict immediate political damage” on Reynolds and the then government of the day.
The Plan, says the statement of claim, started long before Lisa Wilkinson’s infamous Project interview in February 2021. Shortly after meeting Sharaz in May 2020 – some 14 months after the alleged rape – Higgins crafted a note about an “anatomy of a political sex scandal”.
According to Reynolds’ claims in the proceeding, the Plan continues to this day, with Higgins refusing to apologise to Reynolds or retract allegedly defamatory and disparaging material.
The overriding impression from Reynolds’ claim is clear: Reynolds believes that Higgins and Sharaz left little to chance in furtherance of their Plan. Higgins would later boast in her draft book outline sent to Penguin Random House, “We had become quite a twosome when it came to game planning. My experience as a media adviser, David’s experience as a producer; together we understood how the gallery media sphere operated.”
That much is true. Curated in remarkable detail, the statement takes 20 pages to set out their game planning of various kinds.
Higgins and Sharaz lined up favoured journalists, priming them, drip-feeding them material. Higgins taped private conversations with people she worked with in parliament, and shared the secret recordings with select journalists and former Labor advisers.
The Plan, says the statement of claim, covered other pre-Project conduct including Higgins and Sharaz meeting ACT Labor Party Operations Manager Sandra Fisk in August 2020 to disclose the allegations and later to discuss implications of going to the media; in January 2021, Higgins creating a timeline or “dossier” to be distributed to the media, Sharaz making arrangements around the same time to meet with Wilkinson and news.com journalist Samantha Maiden; Sharaz providing the dossier to Wilkinson “on behalf of Brit”; Sharaz emailing Wilkinson about Higgins’ allegations under the heading “MeToo Liberal Party Project Pitch”; Sharaz and Higgins settling on a parliamentary sitting week to drop the allegations in the media; Sharaz telling Wilkinson during a five-hour interview that you can only prosecute the Liberal Party “in the court of public opinion”; Sharaz telling Wilkinson that “the reason we’ve chosen the timeline … is because it’s a sitting week when we want the story to come out”; Sharaz telling Wilkinson “I’ve got a friend in Labor, Katy Gallagher on the Labor side, who will probe and continue it going”; Wilkinson telling Higgins and Sharaz that “I’m a great believer in people’s time will come” to which Sharaz responded “Linda’s time, please god, let it be Linda’s time” with Wilkinson adding “Well, I think it might be” before reading out text messages with Reynolds to “ridicule” her.
The statement of claim sets out how the Plan involved Higgins speaking with Emma Webster, a former Labor adviser, to discuss how to manage the media when the Project interview dropped; Sharaz lining up Grace Tame to “do media” the day after The Project interview aired.
The alleged Plan is said to have involved Sharaz co-opting senior Labor figures. Sharaz shared the Project transcript with Gallagher before it aired, providing her with a copy of the dossier timeline. Sharaz told Higgins that “Katy is going to come to me with some questions you need to prepare for … she’s really invested.” All this occurred before the Project aired. Reynolds says that when Sharaz acted it can be inferred from the circumstances that “Mr Sharaz’s conduct … was on the instructions or with the consent of the defendant”.
The statement of claim also alleges the orchestrated gang attacks executed by Gallagher, Penny Wong and others over many days that led to Reynolds being admitted to hospital.
The statement contains details of meetings between Higgins and Labor Party members including Anthony Albanese, Tanya Plibersek and former prime ministers Malcolm Turnbull and Kevin Rudd. There are extracts of text messages in March 2021 between Higgins and Sharaz “concerning their Plan”, including Sharaz texting “suck sh** Linda … You awful human” and Higgins to Sharaz: “(Scott Morrison) about to be f..ked over. Just wait. We’ve got him.” And Sharaz to Higgins: “You may as well feed everything we have to Katy.”
The Plan continued, says the statement of claim, with Higgins posting disparaging, taunting social media posts in March this year even after she signed a non-disparagement deed with Reynolds in March 2021, and after Higgins received a concerns notice from Reynolds in July last year, even after mediation talks in Perth in March this year.
Many Australians must be fed up with the Higgins story. I am. But this next instalment strikes at the heart of what Federal Court judge Michael Lee called the “major motif” of the Higgins scandal – her allegation on The Project of a political cover-up. Lee found no evidence to support this serious allegation. He found the allegation “did much collateral damage – including to the fair and orderly progress of the underlying allegation of sexual assault through the criminal justice system”.
Alas, Lee’s comments have no binding legal effect. Higgins hasn’t apologised. Reynolds says she wants Higgins to stop defaming her. Reynolds says she wants Higgins to stop breaching her contract by disparaging her. Reynolds wants to be recompensed for reputational damage, for the hurt and injury she says she suffered by Higgins/Sharaz executing their ‘Plan’.
Late last month, Reynolds added a new pleading that Higgins has conspired with one or more people to injure Reynolds. Tortious conspiracy is serious. If the claim of tortious conspiracy is successful, Reynolds might get an award for aggravated damages.
Still, why should we care anymore? We have been subjected to more than three years of mayhem from this saga. The time wasted, energy expended, careers unfairly and irrevocably damaged, and, of course, the financial costs to the nation are immeasurable.
This litigation matters because we are entitled to know the truth about the alleged Plan so that we can fully assess Gallagher’s involvement in it, the complicity of other Labor figures, and what impact it had on the last election. Persistent questions hover around the morality and legitimacy of Labor’s tactics in prosecuting their attack on Reynolds and her government.
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