Sally Rugg’s new comms gig after settling case with Monique Ryan

Activist Sally Rugg has started a new job the day after news broke of her reaching a legal settlement with former boss Monique Ryan.

Sally Rugg walks out of the Federal Court. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Luis Ascui

Activist Sally Rugg has taken up a new role communications role at embattled human rights charity Amnesty International Australia, the day after news broke of her reaching a legal settlement with former boss and teal MP Monique Ryan.

In a statement sent in response to questions from The Australian on Tuesday afternoon, Amnesty said it was “pleased to welcome” Ms Rugg in the role of “media lead”.

“Sally brings a wealth of experience in communications, strategic advocacy and movement-based social change to Amnesty International‘s human rights work,” an Amnesty spokeswoman said.

Ms Rugg has been contacted for comment.

Her appointment comes as Amnesty battles to deal with the public fallout from revelations last month that it failed to disclose the hacking of Australian donor information — detected in early December — until five days after it received media inquiries about the issue in mid April.

Monique Ryan and Sally Rugg in happier times.

The global charity has also been widely criticised internationally, after an internal review, leaked last month, found significant problems with a report Amnesty had prepared, which accused Ukraine of illegally endangering citizens by placing armed forces in civilian areas.

Ms Rugg was named as one of Amnesty International’s top 15 women championing human rights in 2017, amid her role campaigning for same sex marriage to be legalised.

Prior to joining Dr Ryan’s office for her short-lived stint as chief of staff in July last year, the LGBTQI activist previously worked as executive director of Change.org and campaign director at GetUp.

Late on Monday, news broke that Ms Rugg had reached an in-principle agreement with Dr Ryan and the commonwealth on April 28, accepting an offer of about $100,000 to abandon her Federal Court case that her employer had breached the Fair Work act in requiring her to work unreasonable additional hours.

Ms Rugg failed in March in her bid to be reinstated as Dr Ryan’s chief of staff, after the court heard evidence from Dr Ryan that their relationship was “irreparable”, and that she did not have “trust and confidence” in the activist and former Change.org executive director’s ability to perform the required work.

In documents filed as part of the case last month, Ms Rugg claimed that she regularly worked 65 hours a week during her six months employed by Dr Ryan, for which she was paid a salary and allowances totalling more than $160,000.

Documents filed by both parties depicted a bitter and personal falling-out between Dr Ryan, a former paediatric neurologist who defeated Treasurer Josh Frydenberg to win the affluent inner Melbourne seat of Kooyong, and Ms Rugg.

In affidavits submitted by both women, the public learnt Dr Ryan had been horrified when Ms Rugg took a commercial flight home from Canberra while Covid positive.

Ms Rugg also claimed in court documents that Dr Ryan had threatened to sack her four times in five weeks.