‘This is difficult’: Reynolds’ shock testimony about political firestorm of 2021

Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds requested a break from questioning at the WA Supreme Court on Tuesday, after recalling a warning from late Victorian senator Kimberley Kitching that Labor intended to “rain hell” on her over Brittany Higgins’ alleged rape – before making the extraordinary claim the saga led to her death.

Reynolds told the court she and Higgins, her former staffer, had parted ways on good terms in mid-2019 when Higgins accepted a job in the office of WA Senator Michaelia Cash.

WA Senator Linda Reynolds (right) and former staffer Brittany Higgins (centre) faced off again in court today. Higgins’ partner David Sharaz (left) did not have the financial means to take the matter to trial.Credit: Composite image by Aresna Villanueva

Outside a media enquiry from the Canberra Times about the parliamentary security breach involving Higgins and alleged rapist Bruce Lehrmann for a story never published (Lehrmann has always maintained his innocence), Reynolds said there had been no discussion of the breach.

That was until February 2021, when a senate meeting ended with a warning to Reynolds, the former defence minister, that now reads more like a premonition.

Reynolds told the court Kitching approached her, revealing she had received an anonymous letter about the alleged rape – which she said was about to be weaponised by the opposition.

Kitching claimed they had threatened to “rain hell” down on Reynolds and the Morrison government.

“I was completely incredulous. I said ‘why would anyone weaponise such an incident?’,” Reynolds told the court.

The former Victorian senator told Reynolds she had forwarded the letter to police, and that this infuriated members of parliament who had wished to use it.

Reynolds said she took the matter straight to her chief of staff before scheduling an urgent appointment to see then-prime minister Scott Morrison and discuss the perceived imminent attack.

But her sworn testimony was brought to a halt after she reported feeling her blood pressure “starting to go up”, before making the extraordinary claim that the saga led to Kitching’s untimely death.

“This is a particularly difficult … given it led to Senator Kitching’s death,” she told the court.

Kitching died of a heart attack on March 10, 2022, at the age of 52.

Her death was followed by allegations she had been bullied by several of her parliamentary colleagues.

When probed by lawyer Martin Bennett, Reynolds recounted the anger and hurt she felt a fortnight later as the first news publications detailing the mishandling of her ex-staffer’s alleged rape began emerging.

Reynolds told the court she was overcome by emotions while reading an article by journalist Samantha Maiden about Higgins’ alleged rape and the “political cover-up” that followed.

Senator Linda Reynolds and lawyer Martin Bennett outside the WA Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon.Credit: Jesinta Burton

“From beginning to end, I felt sick. She said she felt forced to decide between reporting the rape to the AFP and keeping her job, and that was simply not true,” Reynolds told the court.

“It just went downhill from there in terms of what she was alleging.”

She said numerous statements in the article were, according to her, untrue and that comments she had never uttered were attributed to her, including that she told Higgins “as a woman, this is something we go through”.

Reynolds told the court she spent the hours that followed casting her mind back to cues she may have missed and trying to reconcile how their recollections could be so different before Higgins’ tell-all interview with The Project aired.

“I was incredibly angry and hurt, and she probably didn’t even realise this, but she couldn’t have picked a worse issue to bring me down,” she said.

“It is such an abhorrent thing… to say someone has mistreated a rape allegation and covered it up.”

Reynolds wiped away tears in court, saying suggestions she covered up the alleged rape of her own staffer impacted her in myriad ways, from unrelenting questions in parliament to a “complete media frenzy”.

“In the space of a couple of days, I had gone from a senator doing her job and doing it well to being nationally vilified,” she said.

“Everybody looked at me differently. Even people on my own side were questioning ‘has she really done this thing?’... It was devastating.”

And she addressed revelations she uttered the words “lying cow” while watching the Network 10 broadcast, words she said she couldn’t recall but nonetheless apologised to her staff and Higgins for saying.

Reynolds in parliament during Question Time in February, 2021.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The former defence minister also detailed how her vision became impaired, chest tightened and knees buckled in parliament as she experienced her first symptoms of a previously undiagnosed cardiac disease exacerbated by stress.

The sworn testimony came just hours after Bennett launched a bid to subpoena Higgins, her husband David Sharaz and sexual assault campaigner Saxon Mullins over a fundraiser to bankroll Higgins’ legal fees.

Bennett told the court he would seek to obtain all communications between the trio, as well as political advisor Emma Webster and Higgins’ lawyer Carmel Galati over the fundraiser launched on Monday.

He said the fundraiser, the proceeds of which Galati is to hold on trust for Higgins, was part of a carefully calculated campaign to characterise the proceedings as Reynolds seeking to silence a sexual assault survivor.

“It is not coincidental, nor do we see it as an attempt to attract followers to Higgins’ advocacy of sexual assault victims. It implies there is an attempt to prevent her from speaking about her alleged rape,” Bennett told the court.

The scope of the defamation case has grown again less than one week into the five-week trial.

Bennett has filed an application to amend the case after Higgins published the cover of a book about silencing women to her Instagram while Reynolds was on the stand, a move he claimed amounted to aggravation.

For the past year, Reynolds has been pursuing Higgins for damages as well as aggravated damages over several social media posts in which she claims she was accused of using the media to harass her former staffer.

Reynolds claims the posts were false and defamatory of her, brought her into public hatred and damaged her physical and mental health.

Higgins is vigorously defending the claim on the basis the imputations of harassment and the mishandling of her alleged rape are true.

The former staffer allegedly sold her home in France to bankroll the legal fees, which are already understood to be in the order of $1 million.

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