Higgins grilled over Lisa Wilkinson recording

The ACT Supreme Court on Thursday were played a snippet of audio from a January 27 meeting between Lisa Wilkinson, Brittany Higgins, and her boyfriend David Sharaz.

Day three of the rape trial against former political staffer Bruce Lehrmann continues in Canberra.

So desperate was Brittany Higgins to be believed about her alleged rape at Parliament House that she covertly recorded conversations – including one with a cabinet ­minister – and distributed them to “as many people as possible”.

Day three of Bruce Lehrmann’s rape trial also heard that Ms Higgins gave two media interviews – including a six-hour tell-all with The Project’s Lisa Wilkinson – before approaching police with her complaint.

And a​udio played to the court revealed that Ms Higgins had wanted The Project interview to drop at the start of a parliamentary sitting week in February 2021 to force the ­government to respond to her ­allegations.

Under cross-examination for the first time, Ms Higgins’ credibility was attacked by the defence.

The former staffer admitted she made incorrect statements on how much time had passed before she wore again the white cocktail dress she had on the night of the alleged rape.

Ms Higgins had said she kept the dress under her bed in a plastic bag for six months but was shown a photo of her wearing it on May 15, about eight weeks after the ­alleged assault.

“I was wrong (about how long it was there),” she said. 

“I made a mistake ... I left it under my bed for a period of time, and I was wrong about that time.”

Brittany Higgins arrives to give evidence in front of an ACT Supreme Court jury on the third day of the trial of her alleged rapist, Bruce Lehrmann. (Photo by Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

The court has heard that at the time Ms Higgins claims she was in the toilet at work having a panic attack for three hours, she was ­actually at a valedictory lunch for former Liberal MP Steven Ciobo with her former boyfriend Ben ­Dillaway. Asked when the panic attack had happened, Ms Higgins could not recall. 

“There were so many trau­matising events,” she said.

She also conceded that a photo that purportedly showed a bruise on her left leg, which she earlier said was caused when Mr Lehrmann pinned her left thigh down with his knee on the outside edge of a couch, was actually of her right leg. 

The court heard a snippet of audio from a January 27 meeting between Ms Higgins, Wilkinson and her boyfriend David Sharaz.

In the audio, Mr Sharaz is heard saying the couple wanted the story to drop on February 15, 2021, because it was the start of a parliamentary sitting week.

“It’s a sitting week when we want the story to come out,” Mr Sharaz can be heard telling Wilkinson and her producer.

“Sitting week the story comes out … questions … it’s a mess for them. That’s why Britt’s picked that timeline.”

In the audio, Mr Sharaz said Ms Higgins had devised a timeline that the story would drop before a sitting week so the government would have to take questions. 

He said Labor senator Katy Gallagher would probe and keep the story going in March at a ­Senate estimates hearing. 

Ms Higgins on Thursday told the court that she stood by her timing: “As a media adviser, as anyone who is a professional in their field, you’d obviously – if you are going to run a story that’s political in ­nature, you would always drop it at the start of a sitting week so I stand by that as a choice.” 

Bruce Lehrmann arrives to the ACT Supreme Court on the third day of the trial. (Photo by Martin Ollman/Getty Images)

She said negotiations over timing were led by the journalists to whom she had given the interview: Samantha Maiden, from news.com.au, and Wilkinson. 

“They both had sort of ­exclusive rights and they were fighting over when it would be ­released and who did what and who got the exclusive drop so that come Walkleys (Walkley Awards) time, who could claim what,” Ms Higgins said.

“So it became not even about me or my story. It became about them so ­realistically it was – it was about – it was their choice and their call. I didn’t really have remit or control over it at that point.”

Mr Lehrmann has pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual intercourse without consent and recklessness towards whether Ms Higgins was consenting. 

He stared at Ms Higgins as audio of The Project meeting played in the courtroom. 

Steven Whybrow, representing Mr Lehrmann, told the court that ​police wanted to interview Ms Higgins about the alleged sexual assault before the media published her story but that ​she ­wanted the “media releases to play out first”.

Ms Higgins said: “I don’t accept that.”

Mr Whybrow said Ms Higgins wanted the story to break in the media before she gave police an interview, so that politicians would not be able to avoid answering questions by being able to say they couldn’t comment due to  ​because of a police investigation.

Ms Higgins replied that the two goals were “in lock-step”. 

“In my mind, I’d quit my job so there was no impetus for either of those things (the media or police interviews) not to happen,” she said.

The 27-year-old confirmed that ​she met with police at the ­Belconnen Police Station on Saturday ​February 6, 2021, accompanied by Mr Sharaz. 

At that meeting, Ms Higgins ​she told police she had compiled a timeline of events, a witness list and “recordings from the workplace”.

“They didn’t seem that interested (in the recordings),” she told the court. “They wanted more of the ­actual facts of the assault.”

Ms Higgins said Mr Sharaz gave the dossier and timeline she had compiled for police to two journalists when she was passed out on valium, a decision he had later come to regret. 

“I was pretty out of it because I was taking a lot of Valium at that point in time, because I wasn’t coping, and my partner made a ­decision that he will very freely say that he regrets,” she said. 

Ms Higgins said she went to the media because she wanted to instigate cultural reform within the Liberal Party. 

“I love my party, the Liberal Party, and didn’t necessarily want to hurt them,” she said. 

“I wanted to reform this issue [and] I wanted to talk about something that had happened to me.”

Ms Higgins said she had never expected her accused rapist to be named or that police would prosecute the case. 

The court heard audio of Mr Lehrmann asking security to let him and Ms Higgins into Parliament House about 1.30am on March 23, 2019, just before the ­alleged rape. 

“Bruce Lehrmann here from minister Linda Reynolds,” she said he said. 

“I’m here to pick up some documents. I’ve forgotten my pass.”

Ms Higgins said she was quite out of it and didn’t have all her faculties with her but remembered Mr Lehrmann saying something similar in the cab from the 88mph club. 

Mr Lehrmann was recorded on CCTV leaving parliament without documents and later told police he returned to work that evening ­because he forgot his apartment keys. 

CCTV footage played to the court showed Mr Lehrmann and Ms Higgins passing through ­security and putting their belongings through the scanner. 

Ms Higgins, wearing a long white dress, passes through the ­security scanner before she returns and smiles as she goes through a second time. 

She again returns, removes her black heels and walks through the scanner for the third time. 

After making it to the other side, Ms Higgins struggles to put her shoes on as Mr Lehrmann, arms folded, watches her from the corridor entrance before walking off. 

She gives up on her shoes and follows Mr Lehrmann barefoot on the blue carpet to the door to ­Senator Reynolds’ office, which is opened by a security guard.  The couch where Ms Higgins alleges Mr Lehrmann raped her is a grey, possibly leather, two-seater lounge next to an Australian flag in front of the minister’s desk. 

Ms Higgins said her head was jammed in the right corner ­between the headrest and the armrest closest to the door as she stared out the window looking over the Prime Minister’s ­courtyard.

She said through tears that her legs were “spread open” by Mr Lehrmann’s knees and she felt like she was “a prop pinned into that corner”. 

Ms Higgins said she was so ­broken in the days following the alleged rape she couldn’t leave the confines of her room, making countless doctor appointments she’d never attend. 

“I tried to power through it but I couldn’t,” she said. 

Ms Higgins said in a second meeting with Fiona Brown, then chief-of-staff to Senator Reynolds, she felt the alleged rape was being viewed as a potential political problem for the party ahead of an election. “Initially I felt she was very supportive but then it was very different,” Ms Higgins said about the meeting, which she believed was on March 29. 

“(The second meeting) was a lot more formal in tone and had become more political.”

Ms Higgins said she felt she had to move to Perth to keep her job and she had a meeting with Senator Reynolds about the alleged rape, on a date she believed to be April 1, 2019. 

She said it was the first time she had returned to the office where the alleged rape occurred and told the court she felt “panicked” and the meeting became a conversation about the election. 

“My understanding of it was … they were trying to feel out whether I was going to the police and how they were going to deal with me,” she said. “They made reference to the election.”

Ms Higgins said Senator ­Reynolds had “negligible” contact with her during the election campaign in Perth and the then defence industry minister regarded her as “toxic” because of the ­alleged rape. 

The court heard that after Ms Higgins resigned from a subsequent assistant media adviser role in the office of Michaelia Cash – on January 29, 2021 – the minister called her young staffer to offer her alternatives to resigning that included working from the Gold Coast. Ms Higgins secretly recorded that phone call and sent it to Emma Webster, who then worked for the First People’s Assembly in Victoria but was now a PR ­consultant, about 15 minutes later “for safekeeping”.

“I don’t know why I had this unfounded belief that I would, like, lose five recordings,” she told the court,  “but I was trying to give them to as many people as possible to have them just so that they existed, because it’s my word against a cabinet minister’s and the disparity between those two powers is ridiculous

“So I was trying to give it to as many friends just to be like, ‘Please can you hold on to this for me?’ ”

Ms Higgins admitted to having covertly recorded a meeting with Senator Cash’s chief of staff Daniel Try the day after her six-hour interview for The Project. 

Ms Higgins said she was trying to corroborate her alleged rape for “legal protection”. 

She then sent the recording to Maiden. “I didn’t know if she believed me 100 per cent, yes, and so I just needed her to hear it from the words – from the mouth of ­someone else, because it sounds – all of it sounds ridiculous, but I needed a chief of staff to corrob­orate it,” Ms Higgins said under cross-examination.

She said the purpose of the meeting with Mr Try was also to get information about another ­alleged sexual assault that he ­apparently knew about.

The court heard Ms Higgins texted Wilkinson to say that on May 15, 2019, she sat next to Senator Reynolds because no one else wanted to sit next to her. 

Ms Higgins told the court she had a “nice moment” and conversation with the then defence industry minister during the dinner. 

When Mr Whybrow asked Ms Higgins why then on May 16 she texted former partner Ben Dillaway that Senator Reynolds sat next to her, she said she “didn’t need to go into the granular detail” of her evening with him. 

The trial continues.