Unwell Reynolds paid Higgins to make ‘lying cow’ gibe ‘go away’

Linda Reynolds says she paid former staffer Brittany Higgins over her ‘lying cow’ gibe, as she was ‘in no state’ to defend herself against a claim of defamation.

Former Liberal minister Linda Reynolds says she paid Brittany Higgins compensation over her “lying cow” gibe simply to “make it go away” and was in such poor health at the time that she was “in no state” to defend herself against a claim of defamation.

Senator Reynolds’s frustration at being accused of failing to support Ms Higgins in the ­aftermath of her rape allegations boiled over as news broke that day, first by Samantha Maiden on news.com.au and later that night when Ms Higgins was interviewed by Lisa Wilkinson on The Project on February 15, 2021.

As The Australian revealed, Senator Reynolds called Ms Higgins a “lying cow” in an open-plan area of her parliamentary office after she learned Ms Higgins was accusing her of failing to support her.

Brittany Higginsand partner David Sharaz in the Maldives in January. Picture: Instagram

By the time The Australian published the remark two weeks later, Senator Reynolds was already on medical leave on the advice of her cardiologist following the uproar created by Ms Higgins’ public allegations.

Ms Higgins responded to the outburst, saying Senator Reynolds’ language was inexcusable and “incredibly hurtful”.

She hired lawyer Rebekah Giles, who described the remark as a “distasteful character ­assassination”.

“Self-evidently, this demeaning and belittling statement, in which you refer to our client as a member of the animal kingdom and declare her to be untruthful, is highly defamatory of our ­client’s good character and unblemished reputation,” Ms Giles wrote to Senator Reynolds.

The insinuation was that Senator Reynolds was questioning the truth of the rape allegation, but she says she was reacting in shock to the allegation – which she was hearing for the first time – that she and her then chief of staff, Fiona Brown, had failed to support Ms Higgins and had even brought her into Senator Reynolds’s office knowing that Ms Higgins claimed a rape had taken place on the sofa there.

Ms Higgins also claimed she was forced to choose between reporting a rape to the police or keeping her job.

“It [her lying cow remarks] was about the alleged lack of support that Fiona and I offered her,” Senator Reynolds said.

She paid sizeable damages to Ms Higgins, out of her own pocket, and publicly apologised but noted “I did not mean [the comment] in the sense it may have been understood”.

“I was paying for it to go away,” Senator Reynolds says now. “I was in no state to defend myself. I was still on sick leave. My whole world had come crashing down.”

Ms Higgins accepted the apology and planned to donate the money to a charity assisting victims of sexual ­assault.

In response to The Australian’s article, Ms Higgins tweeted on Sunday saying she “donated all funds from my defamation case against Senator Reynolds to a sexual assault charity the moment they were received by my lawyer in 2021’’.

As I wasn’t given a right of reply for this particular story I figured I’d clear it up here.

I donated all funds from my defamation case against Senator Reynolds to a sexual assault charity the moment they were received by my lawyer in 2021.

See the receipt below. pic.twitter.com/ubQoQ7voxu

— Brittany Higgins (@BrittHiggins_) February 18, 2023

It was a low point for Senator Reynolds.

Then prime minister Scott Morrison condemned the outburst as “inappropriate and wrong’’ but pointed out that she as “under significant stress” and backed her to remain in cabinet. “(Her) comments … related to the commentary about levels of support provided and her frustrations about how she felt that they were doing everything they believed in their power to provide support,” he said.