Linda Reynolds is about to find out if suing Brittany Higgins was a good idea | Samantha Maiden

There’s one question on everyone’s lips as the trial wraps up – what do any of these ugly claims have to do with the defamation suit, writes Samantha Maiden.

Looking for the truth in a defamation case can sometimes seem a bit like landing on the planet Tatooine, a “wretched hive of scum and villainy”, and then walking straight into the Star Wars bar and hoping to find someone without an alien mask.

And yet, as the long-running feud over in the WA Supreme Court between Linda Reynolds, Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz comes to a close, there are few things we have learned.

If you believe Senator Linda Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett, “every fairytale needs a villain” and Brittany Higgins and her husband David Sharaz chose Linda Reynolds to play that part.

Two years later, that is the relevant backstory, he argues, to a handful of posts Ms Higgins made on Instagram and social media.

If you prefer the account of Brittany Higgins and her barrister, the alleged rape had “never been a fairytale” and Senator Reynolds’ defamation case is “meritless”.

Her legal team argues Senator Reynolds indeed did harass her former staffer including by leaking confidential documents about her alleged rape to the media, referring her $2.4 million payout to the anti-corruption watchdog.

Senator Linda Reynolds speaks to the media as she leaves the Supreme Court for a defamation trial against her former staffer Brittany Higgins in Perth Picture: NewsWire / Sharon Smith

And by repeatedly accusing her of stealing an old Carla Zampatti jacket on the morning after she was allegedly raped. In other words, one of their defences to the alleged defamation is truth.

Meanwhile, the WA Supreme Court heard the former defence minister was an unreliable witness. Ms Higgins’ lawyer accused Senator Reynolds of offering non-responsive, gratuitous answers on the conduct of others, when not asked to.

From Senator Reynolds’ partner Robert Reid and even the former Prime Minister Scott Morrison, we also learned of the former defence minister’s ordeal, that her family feared she “could die” after the rape allegation broke in the media and the “false” claims she had mishandled it emerged.

She went to see a cardiologist in 2021 who reportedly said she was in very bad shape and then sent her home to give a speech at the National Press Club the next morning.

“It does seem rather strange that the cardiologist would say that and then the patient [Reynolds] would be discharged into the community,” Justice Tottle observed.

We have also learned that Ms Reynolds texted Bruce Lehrmann’s defence barrister during the criminal trial in 2022 on WhatsApp at 11pm at night to observe that Ms Higgins was wearing an identical designer outfit once worn by The Princess of Wales, also known as Kate Middleton, to the rape trial.

Senator Reynolds then deleted these texts as part of routine “cyber hygiene”.

But they were miraculously revived and subpoenaed by Higgins’ legal team after they were provided to Walter Sofronoff’s inquiry into the criminal trial. Although, their existence was suppressed and hidden during those proceedings.

We learned, via her legal team, that Senator Reynolds never questioned the veracity of the rape allegation.

But despite not questioning the rape claim, far from being traumatised and isolated in Western Australia in the aftermath, Reynolds’ lawyers argued Brittany Higgins wasn’t upset at all.

The evidence was text messages to her then boyfriend and the fact she was smiling and having a lovely time in some photographs.

As such, her lawyer argued almost every paragraph of her $2.4 million compensation claim about how it the alleged rape was mishandled was “rubbish”.

The WA Supreme Court was told that Ms Higgins’ husband David Sharaz, who was not called as a witness during the trial, when a string of his questionable text messages was tendered, was involved in an elaborate plot to bring down the Liberal Government, sort of like The Dismissal, but without Governor-General John Kerr.

Astonishingly, this plot included getting Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff and Sky News presenter Peta Credlin to write her press releases.

But before we continue, an important observation about the Linda Reynolds v Brittany Higgins defamation trial amid all the flotsam and jetsam of ugly claims and how on earth they link back to the central question.

Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz with their cavapoodle dog Kingston in France. Picture: Jacquelin Magnay

This defamation trial and what it is actually about has been profoundly misunderstood, including by some, although certainly not all, of the hardworking journalists who covered the case.

One of the reasons for that, in my opinion, is the regrettable practice of the WA Supreme Court not to publicly release the statement of claim and the defence’s response from the start – the legal document laying out what the case is actually about.

In recent weeks there have been media reports from reputable outlets that Ms Higgins was “pleading truth and so must prove a cover up”.

Wrong.

There’s no pleadings from Brittany Higgins’ lawyers arguing there was a “cover up” of a rape.

As an aside, there was no mention of the “cover up” word when I interviewed Ms Higgins in 2021. The word cover up does not appear in the original interviews we published.

It’s clear from the documents that the cover up idea was being pushed by David Sharaz and was picked up by Lisa Wilkinson and The Project’s reporting but it was not a feature of what Ms Higgins told me from my notes and recordings.

But who can blame journalists for not having a clue what is going on if they are forced to rely on roadside press conferences outside the court by lawyers and parties and can’t read the statement of claim without spending $400?

Soon, the outcome of this enormous legal gamble will be writ large. Senator Reynolds decided that to restore her reputation the only way was to take the trial all the way to the WA Supreme Court.

Whether or not that was a wise choice will be revealed in due course.

Originally published as Linda Reynolds is about to find out if suing Brittany Higgins was a good idea | Samantha Maiden