Two Liberal staffers entered Linda Reynolds’ ministerial suite in Parliament House in the early hours of 23 March 2019.
That night and how those around them responded in the years after have become one of the most contested events in Australia’s political history.
And more than six years later, the legal fallout continues.
The Western Australian supreme court ruled this week that Reynolds was defamed twice by Brittany Higgins on social media after she first went public in 2021 to accuse her former boss of mishandling her rape allegation.
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The ruling marks the end of a protracted legal battle between Reynolds and Higgins, her former employee, unless the latter decides to appeal against the decision.
But the long-running saga has not yet reached its conclusion.
How did we get here?
The train had been set in motion once Higgins decided to go public about her version of events.
Higgins told news.com.au and The Project in February 2021 that she had been raped in Reynolds’ ministerial office by an unnamed former colleague, later publicly identified as Bruce Lehrmann, and claimed that Reynolds had not supported her adequately.
A criminal trial over the matter was abandoned because of juror misconduct and a second attempt was aborted owing to concerns for Higgins’ mental health.
Last year, in a defamation case brought by Lehrmann, Justice Michael Lee found that, on the balance of probabilities, Lehrmann had raped Higgins on the minister’s couch.
Upon watching the Project interview, Reynolds is alleged to have called Higgins a “lying cow” in front of her staff, in relation to the lack of support claim, which was then leaked to the media. She later said “she did not mean it in the sense it may have been understood” and that it was about Higgins’ allegations that she was not supported.
Higgins and Reynolds agreed to a settlement in March 2021, with Reynolds issuing a public apology to Higgins. The agreement also included a non-disparagement clause to prevent either party from speaking negatively about the other in relation to it.
But the public jabs at one another didn’t stop there.
In January 2022, almost a year after Higgins went public with her allegations, her partner, and now husband, David Sharaz, posted on Twitter that Reynolds could be asked in court about her involvement in making Higgins feel “pressured by the office not to continue” her police complaint against Lehrmann.
Higgins responded to Sharaz’s tweet, saying “I have no words”, ending with a zipper mouth emoji. This week, the WA supreme court ruled those four words and single emoji were defamatory and, because she couldn’t prove their truth or otherwise prove a defence, they would cost Higgins $135,000 in damages to Reynolds.
In July 2023, Reynolds revealed she would refer Higgins’ $2.445m personal injury settlement to the federal anti-corruption body.
In response, Higgins took to social media to accuse Reynolds of continuing a harassment campaign “through the media and in the parliament”.
“My former boss who has publicly apologised for mishandling my rape allegation. Who has had to publicly apologise to me after defaming me in the workplace … This has been going on for years now. It is time to stop,” Higgins wrote in the Instagram story in July 2023.
The court ruled that it was also defamatory and, because she couldn’t prove it was true or otherwise establish a defence, Higgins should pay Reynolds $180,000 in damages for the post.
Higgins’ legal team was successful in defending against defamation for another social media post in July 2023, in which she likened Reynolds’ submission to the ACT Board of Inquiry to “silencing” sexual assault victim-survivors. The ruling found Higgins’ lawyers had successfully established the defence of honest opinion, fair comment and qualified privilege.
The ruling also showed Reynolds had failed to prove Higgins and Sharaz had concocted a conspiracy to publicly release the details of Higgins’ alleged rape with the “sole or predominant purpose” of destroying the former senator’s reputation.
Is that the end of these legal battles?
The WA supreme court’s ruling should mark the end of the dispute between Reynolds and Higgins but it is still possible Higgins could decide to appeal against the judgment.
Missing from the supreme court’s decision this week, however, was a ruling on Sharaz’s case.
Reynolds had also taken defamation action against Sharaz for comments he made on social media in 2022. Sharaz said he would not challenge Reynolds’ defamation claim in April 2024 because he could not afford to pay his legal costs.
The judge has yet to deliver his ruling on Sharaz’s case.
Beyond this defamation fight, there are other cases afoot.
In June, the National Anti-Corruption Commission found “no corruption issue” with the $2.445m payout to Higgins, including that “there was no inappropriate intervention” by the former attorney general Mark Dreyfus.
Dreyfus responded to the Nacc’s finding that he regretted “the baseless allegation of corruption has been so widely publicised ahead of this finding and hope future matters can be resolved in a more timely manner”.
But Reynolds will also test her concerns about the settlement process in the federal court. The former senator said she had been denied the opportunity to defend herself against claims by Higgins that she had not supported her adequately and had mishandled the allegation.
In her statement of claim, Reynolds accused Dreyfus of “misfeasance of public office” by denying her defence and claimed Dreyfus had a conflict of interest because of critical comments he made against her. Dreyfus declined to respond at the time of reporting.
A case management hearing is listed for October.
Documents released to the Western Australian supreme court last year showed Reynolds was asked not to attend the mediation in December 2022 or make any public commentary about Higgins and to maintain confidentiality of information related to the settlement and civil claims in order to give the commonwealth the “best position to achieve a resolution at the mediation”. The settlement was signed a week later.
Where to from here for Higgins and Reynolds?
In the immediate sense, Higgins has been ordered to pay $341,000 in damages and interest to Reynolds for two posts found defamatory by the courts.
But she will also be on the hook for Reynolds’ and her own legal and court fees. That sum could push past $1m.
In mid-2024, a spokesperson for Higgins said she was “forced to sell her home” in France to pay for legal costs associated with the defamation case.
Reynolds’ financial challenges have also been publicly revealed with her lawyer, Martin Bennett, telling the WA supreme court the former senator had “mortgaged [her] house to the hilt to pay for litigation”.
