Linda Reynolds will rely on key photos of Brittany Higgins campaigning with her in Perth during the 2019 federal election.
Ms Higgins has long maintained Senator Reynolds and her former chief-of-staff Fiona Brown did very little to support her after her rape in March 2019.
She claimed as much in her $2.4million settlement deed with the Commonwealth in December 2022, which was rife with allegations against her former bosses.
According to the settlement claim, which was released last year by the Federal Court, Ms Higgins told Ms Reynolds and Ms Brown she was raped and they told her to cast it aside.
‘Ms Brown made it clear by her words and demeanour that the events of 22/23 March 2019 must be put to one side and that [Ms Higgins] needed to remain silent about the sexual assault, in order to keep her job/career,’ the deed read.
‘In that context, [Ms Higgins] felt she had no choice but to abandon the pursuit of the complaint of sexual assault with the AFP.’
She claimed Ms Brown didn’t ask if she wanted to report the incident to police, or if she needed legal advice.
Ms Higgins also has the long-held belief that she was given an ultimatum after she disclosed her allegations to Ms Reynolds and Ms Brown – she could either go with the minister to Perth and help campaign for the forthcoming election, or she could go home to the Gold Coast and leave Canberra forever.
Ms Reynolds and Ms Brown previously told a court that they did not give her an ‘ultimatum’, but she did have the option of going to Perth – so she went in April 2019, weeks after the assault.
According to the deed, Ms Higgins was ‘required to mostly work in her own hotel room, seven days a week for six weeks’. She has never made that claim in a court before.
(Pictured below: Linda Reynolds delivering a speech during the 2019 federal election. Brittany Higgins sits in the front row, in black)
However, new photos released by the WA Supreme Court show Ms Higgins handing out flyers in the street, smiling with her colleagues, and cheering during speeches while donning a blue Liberal polo shirt.
Ms Higgins can be seen posing for photos with then-prime minister Scott Morrison, and watching Ms Reynolds deliver a speech after the Coalition won the election.
In court on Friday, Ms Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett said Mr Bennett said the evidence showed how Ms Higgins and her husband David Sharaz falsely created a narrative that there was no support after her rape.
‘The fact she had been raped was traumatic and terrible but it needed something more to attract the attention, to attract media interest, to attract the promotion of Ms Higgins, so she made it a political sex scandal,’ he told the court.
‘That’s the fiction that needed a villain and she cast Linda Reynolds in that role.’
The deed also says Ms Reynolds did not engage with her at all during the election campaign, but a photo tendered to two courts showed Ms Higgins sitting next to Ms Reynolds at her birthday in Perth.
In that photo, she was wearing the same dress she was raped in.
(Pictured below: Then-prime minister Scott Morrison delivering a speech during the 2019 federal election. Brittany Higgins sits in the back row on the far left)
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