Brittany Higgins felt toxic, telling the journalist who broke the story about her alleged rape in Parliament that Senator Linda Reynolds “hated her”.
The senator is suing her former employee, Ms Higgins (who is defending the suit), over a series of social media posts containing alleged falsehoods that she says damaged her reputation.
Extracts from journalist Samantha Maiden’s interview with Ms Higgins for her 2021 article were played in the Perth libel trial on Wednesday as Senator Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett concluded his case.
“She just avoided me. She avoided being in photos with me, I was toxic. She hated me,” Higgins told Maiden during the taped interview.
‘She worked her whole life to finally (become defence minister) and I was thinking, in her first two weeks… some little idiot who doesn’t know herself being attacked in her office and she hates it, she hated me.’
Ms Higgins also spoke to Maiden about a meeting she had with Senator Reynolds and her then chief of staff, Fiona Brown, in the days after she was allegedly raped in 2019.
“Her standard lines about how she felt sick and ‘I’m horrified’… then she segued into… ‘as women, this is what we go through,'” Higgins said.
And she said, “If you decide to go to the police, we will support you in that process, but we just need to know in advance.”
Brittany Higgins (pictured) said she was “toxic” towards Linda Reynolds in an interview with the journalist who broke the story about her alleged rape in Parliament.
‘She was actually quite nice, like her and Fiona… I didn’t feel like it was a fair conversation… I was the youngest member of staff and… she didn’t know me and she didn’t like me and I was just a problem for her.’
Ms Higgins told the reporter she believed the meeting was a way for the senator to “tick a box”.
“I felt like they had to have this conversation with me so they could officially say ‘we told him he could go to the police,’ but as soon as Linda Reynolds had that meeting, she never mentioned it to me again,” she said.
Ms Higgins told Maiden that “the strangest part was when Linda finally decided to talk to me about the incident and took me back to her ministerial office (where the alleged rape occurred).”
“That was the first time I went back there. I was sitting there, having a meeting about my options, about what had just happened to me,” she said.
‘I’m sure she was saying a lot of beautiful words, but all I knew was the couch, and I was there alone with Fiona and Linda and the couch.
“I thought maybe they just hadn’t considered it.”
Asked why the article was published during a week of parliamentary sessions, Maiden said Higgins wanted it to have an “impact”.
“I got the impression that her motivation was altruistic. She wanted to achieve reform of the parliamentary workplace… she was anxious and worried that it would be a one-day wonder,” said Maiden, who gave evidence via audiovisual link accompanied by three lawyers.
Ms Reynolds (pictured) is suing Ms Higgins and her husband David Sharaz over comments she alleges are false and which she believes damaged her reputation.
Messages from Ms Higgins’ husband, David Sharaz, to Maiden before the interview and after the story was published were read to the Western Australian Supreme Court.
“She’s going to come out with the story and it’s going to be difficult. It’s also going to be big,” he wrote in one of them.
“She had an incident with Me Too and the party covered it up. Please keep that between us,” Sharaz said in another message.
‘She’s making a plan for you.’
After the story broke, Sharaz sent a message: “It’s a strange story. I put on my journalist hat. What a fucking scoop!”
Asked whether Ms Higgins had ever said she wanted to “bring down the Morrison government” or Senator Reynolds, Maiden said she had not.
The trial continues on Thursday with testimony from former Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Leanne Close.
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