What I wish Linda Reynolds would say, instead of suing Brittany Higgins

Politics can be a dog of a job. Thankless, exhausting, even enraging. You can go in with gilded intentions and emerge bruised by hate, splattered with dirt, and not entirely sure what just happened. Sure, it’s a privilege, too, but when you watch the relentless criticism and vitriolic attack, the media’s hourly boxing-of-ears for reasons ranging from fair and important to quite unreasonable and bonkers, you can understand why some might pause before running for parliament.

Which is why I have some sympathy for Linda Reynolds when she told the WA Supreme Court that, following the Bruce Lehrmann rape allegations, she felt like a “punching clown on the fairground”.

Liberal Senator Linda Reynolds during the defamation trial against former staffer Brittany Higgins.Credit: Holly Thompson/ Supplied

It’s clear she has had a rotten time. What’s unclear is why she is persisting with this defamation case against Brittany Higgins, despite the fact she says it may come at the cost of her house. Higgins, too, seems to have been forced to sell a house she had only just bought in France to start a life away from judgmental, prying or pitying eyes after five years of hell.

Is this case worth it, because of social media posts few saw and fewer remember?

First, a reminder of the facts: Bruce Lehrmann strongly denies raping Higgins. His criminal trial was abandoned due to juror misconduct, and the court ruled against a second trial on the grounds of Higgins’ fragile mental health. Then, a judge presiding over a defamation case brought by Lehrmann against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson found that, on the balance of probabilities, Lehrmann had raped Higgins and told “deliberate lies”.

Justice Michael Lee found that Higgins told the truth about being sexually assaulted but had been untruthful at times, partly because of trauma. He objected to how she (and Channel Ten) alleged political cover-up by the likes of Reynolds and her chief of staff by crafting “a narrative accusing others of putting up roadblocks and forcing her … to choose between her career and seeking justice by making and pursuing a complaint”. The allegation of a cover-up, Lee said, was “objectively short on facts”.

Reynolds said that to say she was “pleased” with this judgment would be “an understatement”: “For three years, I have endured intense public scrutiny, vilification, vile trolling and have been demonised as the villain in a story of a political cover-up I have always known to be untrue. The decision of his Honour Justice Lee has finally set the record straight.”

You’d imagine this might be a relief, an end to things, a chance to roll on. No. In WA, Reynolds is suing Higgins for defamation over some social media posts. The greatest contradiction about the case is this: Reynolds has repeatedly said that the worst thing she could have been accused of is not supporting a rape victim. So then, having been essentially cleared of poor conduct by one judge, she decides to continue with proceedings against … that same rape victim. While she’s perfectly entitled to do so in order to defend her reputation, it just doesn’t quite compute.

Reynolds doesn’t want people to say she didn’t uphold her duty of care to Higgins. But this is the same woman she sent a photo of – as Higgins walked into court about to testify about rape – to Lehrmann’s lawyer because, as she said this week, Reynolds felt annoyed that her dress was similar to one of Kate Middleton’s, and she thought Higgins was “trying to imitate” the royal?

The asymmetry of power and seniority here has always been stark – Reynolds was a respected minister, a senator, a senior Liberal. Higgins, an eager, wide-eyed staffer, decades her junior.

What’s the greater reputational risk here: being unfairly accused of mismanaging the rape of an employee or, later, suing the woman who was raped in your own office?

Has anyone behaved faultlessly?

This week, the court heard that Reynolds leaked confidential information about Higgins and her settlement to columnist Janet Albrechtsen from The Australian, even information on how Higgins’ partner, David Sharaz, had “abruptly resigned from his job”.

Why? Why did she agree to appear on Spotlight’s “exclusive” program, which detailed Lehrmann’s side of the story, the same program that was later tarnished by allegations that it had reimbursed Lehrmann for cocaine and sex workers and paid his rent?

Reynolds now wants Higgins to pay her medical bills, which might seem odd to some given that one aspect of her stress was the allegation that Higgins had been raped. There is a curious logic at play here. Reynolds says the anxiety of the media coverage and “intense questioning” in parliament about what happened in her office after The Project interview set off a previously undiagnosed cardiac condition.

She also became depressed and anxious. But can Reynolds’ pain approach in any way that of the actual victim? Of course, Higgins would have been wise to stay off social media, and Channel Ten would have been wise to refrain from airing such big, un-evidenced, destructive claims.

This entire imbroglio has been rightly castigated as an omnishambles, a contaminant, eroding the reputations of parliament, the judiciary, the media, and all unfortunates swept into its enlarged orbit. I’m not the only one who has frequently wondered where the adult in the room is.

Why would Reynolds not say: “Look, I think, and Justice Lee found, that Brittany Higgins and The Project promoted regretful, baseless claims of a political conspiracy that I was falsely alleged to be part of. This has been damaging to my health and reputation. But I accept that a great wrong was found to have occurred to a young woman in my employ and I will avoid further litigation in the hope she can put this awful episode behind her. I wish her well.”

I fully appreciate this has been a taxing time for Reynolds, often deeply unfair, even if she has not suffered anywhere near the same kind of trauma and public opprobrium as Higgins. But beyond the law, beyond the tit-for-tat of politics, you have to wonder if and when another kind of thinking might enter this equation: one of understanding why a young woman who has suffered a trauma might lash out at or resent those she perceived to have let her down. Whose mental health dipped wildly whilst waiting for some kind of resolution. Of allowing someone to make mistakes, to be human. Of giving the benefit of the doubt. Of not seeking more punishment for those who have already suffered.

In the public eye, the details long ago became blurred, and the ugliness of the whole escapade depressing. As a wise man once said, there reaches a point when it’s about “the vibe” of the thing. And the vibe here, on continuing litigation against a woman found to have been raped five years ago, who has had periods so black that she has been in and out of hospital repeatedly ever since, who has been forced to sell a house when pregnant with her first child is a bit … off.

This will be the case no matter the verdict. It just seems, sometimes, that the most important question is so often forgotten: “In the middle of all of this chaos, hurt, damage and muddle, what is the most decent thing to do?”

Julia Baird is co-host of the Not Stupid podcast with Jeremy Fernandez on ABC Listen.

The Opinion newsletter is a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up here.