Sky News columnist Peta Credlin helped draft Brittany Higgins’ statement given to media in 2021, after her rape allegations were made public, a court has been told.
In closing arguments to Western Australia’s supreme court, where Reynolds is suing Higgins for defamation, Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett on Tuesday said Higgins had “visceral hatred” towards her former employer and exaggerated how long she had to wait for counselling support following her rape allegations to “suit” her narrative.
Reynolds sued Higgins over a series of social media posts published in July 2023, which the Liberal senator alleged had damaged her reputation. But Higgins has claimed a defence of truth, saying Reynolds mishandled her 2019 rape allegation – which was made public in 2021 – and did not properly support her.
On Tuesday, Bennett said a statement Higgins made after the allegations were made public was drafted with the help of Credlin.
The court was shown an email thread between Higgins, her now-husband David Sharaz and Credlin, which said: “Hi Peta, Thank-you again for your help. Please see below the initial draft – feel free to completely rework wherever you see fit.”
Credlin responded with some suggestions and another exhibit showed a final version of the statement was texted to Higgins by Sharaz. Bennett said the correspondence demonstrated the level of media planning Higgins engaged in following the publication of her rape allegations.
Higgins’ lawyer Rachael Young SC responded it was usual for media statements to go through a series of drafts and that it didn’t “detract” from Higgins’ words.
Earlier Bennett dismissed the defence’s claims that Reynolds’ hurt and distress was caused by “public scrutiny”, saying it was instead due to the “deliberate defamatory conduct” by Higgins.
Bennett pointed to a text message Higgins sent to Sharaz on 17 May 2021, where she wrote: “Fuck it. If they want to play hardball I’ll cry on the Project again because of this sort of mistreatment. I do not care.”
Bennett said the message showed this was “a woman who was prepared to cry again” and was further evidence of her “visceral hatred” of Reynolds.
Witness evidence over the weeks has dealt with the alleged harm Reynolds faced by the posts but has also centred on other events across the five-year period after Higgins alleged she had been raped by her then colleague Bruce Lehrmann in the then defence minister’s office in Parliament House in 2019.
Lehrmann denies raping Higgins and his criminal trial was derailed by juror misconduct. As part of Lehrmann’s failed defamation trial against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson, a federal court in April found that, on the balance of probabilities, he raped Higgins. Lehrmann has appealed against that finding.
Bennett said on Tuesday Higgins had exaggerated her wait time for counselling support following her rape allegations to “suit” her narrative. He said Higgins was encouraged to seek employment assistance services in the week after the allegations were first revealed to the senator and Reynolds’ then chief of staff, Fiona Brown.
In her televised interview with The Project in 2021, Higgins said she was handed a brochure for those services but there was a “two-month wait” before she could receive support.
The court was shown text messages showing Higgins had been offered an appointment with the counselling service on 18 April 2019 – nearly a month after the alleged rape.
Bennett said: “It’s not the trauma of a rape victim getting it wrong, it’s on her phone … it wouldn’t suit her purpose to correct that fact.”
Bennett also said Higgins’ claims on The Project that she had been forced to go to Perth to keep her job was “false”, and pointed to a text where Higgins described her planned time in Perth as a “workcation”.
Earlier on Tuesday, Young said her client was not trying to bring down the Morrison government or hurt Reynolds when she came forward with a rape allegation.
In her own closing arguments, Young pointed to a message exchange between the former political staffer and reporter Samantha Maiden.
The journalist asked whether Higgins thought the senator should resign after her story was published.
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“Fully off the record, I don’t think so. I think she was just following instructions to be honest,” Higgins responded in a message on WhatsApp.
Young said Higgins “felt a moral responsibility” to others working in Parliament House when she came forward to publicly reveal allegations she was raped by her then colleague Lehrmann.
Young dismissed the allegation that Higgins was motivated by a desire to “hurt” Reynolds, her former boss, and to “bring down the Morrison government”.
Instead, Young said Higgins’ motivation was to “call out” her alleged perpetrator and the way she was treated after disclosing the incident, and to “achieve reform” in the parliamentary workplace.
In concluding her closing arguments, Young said the trial had heard a lot about the word “agency”.
Reynolds had said she wasn’t a “counsellor” for Higgins and had tried to give her “agency” when asked why she didn’t do a welfare check on her after they held a meeting about her rape allegations.
But Young said Higgins had “no agency” when she was allegedly raped. She had “little agency” when, as a 24-year-old, she met with Reynolds, then the defence minister, in the room where it allegedly happened just a week later.
Higgins had “no agency” when she was sent to Perth to work on the federal election campaign, away from her support networks, Young said.
Young said Higgins did, however, have agency when she decided to come forward to the media and publicly speak about her experience to achieve reform.
Young read out a statement Higgins provided the media in 2021 after the story was published.
“The prime minister has repeatedly told the parliament that I should be given ‘agency’ going forward. I don’t believe that agency was provided to me over the past two years but I seize it now. I was failed repeatedly, but I now have my voice, and I am determined to use [it] to ensure that this is never allowed to happen to another member of staff again.”
Young said: “That’s why she spoke up, that’s what she is being sued about, and that’s why we say this action should be wholly dismissed.”
It is expected the trial before Justice Paul Tottle will conclude on Wednesday.