Queensland Police has interviewed a man over a reportedly explicit video of him and MP Brittany Lauga, which sparked sexual assault and drug-spiking allegations.
The grainy footage is alleged to show Ms Lauga being molested in the street late at night outside The Strand hotel in Yeppoon in central Queensland last month.
Ms Lauga, the member for Keppel, later said she was drugged without her knowledge and had been sexually assaulted in the incident.
She told one local that medical tests in hospital had found MDMA in her system, which she had not knowingly taken.
Police are now investigating who she had contact with over the course of the evening as they investigate the allegations.
No charges have so far been laid in relation to the incident.
Earlier that day on April 27, Lauga had been a guest at the Yeppoon Swans AFL club Ladies Day event, which kicked off at 2pm.
Brittany Lauga is pictured being comforted by her boyfriend Brent Wood at their home 10 days after she was filmed on a Yeppoon street with an unnamed man
The Keppel MP has had a tumultuous nine years in Parliament and is facing a hotly contested state election in her seat on Queensland’s Capricornia Coast
Brittany Lauga is pictured (above) on a Yeppoon main street with a man in a second apparently inoffensive video, separate from the explicit Snapchat footage allegedly circulating online
A police statement said the alleged incident occurred after midnight that night, sometime in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The MP is now laying low since the incident.
In a statement last week, Lauga said she felt ‘awful’ and that the following days were a ‘living nightmare’.
‘You wake up and you have to remind yourself this is reality,’ she said.
‘I went to the police station and the hospital straight after it (the alleged assault) happened and they did a forensic rape kit.
‘They’ve done drug tests, blood, urine, everything.’
In the footage, taken by a bystander in the street close to Yeppoon’s Main Beach, Ms Lauga is seen wearing the same distinctive orange dress she was pictured wearing at the earlier event.
When the clip began circulating on social media, an acquaintance recognised her and told the MP a ‘not pleasant’ and ‘quite explicit’ video had been posted online.
Queensland Police refused to make any comment about the progress of their investigation, but Daily Mail Australia has obtained messages from Ms Lauga to a local about the videoed incident.
In them, the woman said she had seen Ms Lauga with the man on the night in question and the MP told her he wasn’t her boyfriend.
Later in the text conversation, Ms Lauga says: ‘I don’t know the guy. I went to hospital after that and tested positive for MDMA, but didn’t take drugs. I was out of my mind.’
Ms Lauga has since shut down her electoral office in central Yeppoon ‘until further notice’ .
The former town planner, who will contest her seat in the upcoming Queensland state election on October 26, has had a tumultuous time during her nine years in Parliament.
Incidents include her being accused, with her now ex-husband Wayne, of being present at a violent, drunken outburst at a pub, being investigated by the Crime and Corruption Commission.
She also accused a man of unlawfully stalking her, but the case was tossed out of court and he was awarded legal costs.
A Facebook page entitled ‘Brittany Backflip – Fictional character’ includes footage of Ms Lauga in Queensland Parliament saying sorry for misleading the state’s House of Representatives.
In 2022, she apologised for the previous year having… ‘made statements that the current Federal Coalition Government was planning to force every aged pensioner in Australia onto the cashless debit card.
‘I wish to withdraw this statement and apologise if I unintentionally misled the House.’
Ms Lauga was elected in January 2015 as part of Annastacia Palaszczuk’s rise to power in a minority Labor Government.
In her maiden speech to parliament, she credited her parents, Peter and teacher Sharon McKee, for ‘working hard’ and giving her and her musician brother Lewis ‘a great start to life’.
Brittany Lauga, pictured with her former husband Wayne Lauga, has had rocky time in politics and now faces a state election that is predicted to be hard fought
Brittany Lauga’s boyfriend Brent Wood comforted the embattled MP this week after the member for Keppel alleged sexual assault and drug-spiking on a night in the central Queensland town two weekends ago
In the same speech, the law and urban development graduate pledged development and a casino licence for ‘one of the jewels in the crown’ for the Capricornia Coast, the dilapidated resort of Great Keppel Island.
When a motion by the Coalition opposition to allow a boutique gaming licence for GKI was defeated by her own government, she was accused of doing a backflip by conservative commentators.
At the time, Wayne and Brittany Lauga were building their ‘forever home’ in Rockyview south-west of Yeppoon, which had won a Master Builders award, but had gone $273,000 over budget.
Wayne Lauga worked for the company, Hutchinson’s Builder who constructed the lavish house, but resigned in February 2016 amid the fraught deal.
Eventually Hutchinson’s would come to an agreement for the Laugas to pay back $250,000 interest free, but a local businessmen and friend of the couple had begun his own investigation into the deal.
Petros Khalesirad and his partner knew the Laugas socially and his wife and Wayne Lauga had gone to school together, but Brittany alleged that between February and August 2016, Khalesirad stalked her causing her fear.
The Snapchat video is alleged to have been filmed by an unknown person outside Yeppoon’s The Strand Hotel late at night just near the town’s Main Beach and lifesaving club
A woman who recognised Lauga’s distinctive orange dress which she wore out as the clothes worn by the man she was filmed with texted the MP to alert her of the ‘not pleasant’video
Local police charged Petros Khalesirad with unlawful stalking.
In September 2016, police were called to investigate Brittany Lauga and husband Wayne over an alleged ugly bar spat at the Keppel Sands Hotel south of Yeppoon.
The couple was watching the football with a friend, Dave, when a fight allegedly broke out involving Dave and an elderly patron.
The hotel publican said at the time that Wayne Lauga was ‘rude and offensive’, swearing and smashing a glass on the pool table after being asked to leave.
In his statement to police, the publican said he was telephoned two days later by the couple whose behaviour he told them was ‘pretty despicable’ and ‘disgusting around familied and kids’.
The MP’s office then phoned him, the publican stated, and warned him that releasing CCTV of the incident ‘wasn’t allowed … according to some act’, with him responding that it wasn’t his footage to release.
The publican later backed away somewhat from this statement, but banned Wayne Lauga and the man Dave from the premises for 12 months.
Days later, a tearful Brittany Lauga addressed a virtually empty Parliament late at night, sobbing: ‘The claim in the paper that I was asked to leave a licensed venue and have been subsequently banned is simply just not true.’
A Queensland newspaper subsequently denied it had ever said she was banned, only Wayne Lauga and Dave.
Brittany Lauga (above with her father, Peter McKee) credited her parents during her 2015 maiden speech with giving her ‘a great start to life’
MP Lauga apologises for misleading the House of Representatives after she said in 2021 that the then Coalition Government was planning to force every aged pensioner in Australia onto the cashless debit card
In mid-2017, Khalesirad went before Magistrate Cameron Press on the unlawful stalking charge over a three-day hearing.
In December 2017, the magistrate threw out the charge for lack of evidence, and three months later ordered Petros Khalesirad be paid $24,500 in costs.
Magistrate Press said there was no evidence of serious mental, psychological or emotional harm.
Meanwhile, Ms Lauga had been investigated by Queensland’s Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC).
The CCC looked into two corruption complaints against her, alleging she had given the media confidential contact-tracing information involving a Rockhampton nurse who tested positive for coronavirus.
In 2020, the body announced it had assessed the allegations but decided not to proceed with an investigation.
‘There is insufficient evidence that a criminal offence has been committed by the Member for Keppel,’ the CCC said in a a statement.
Brittany and Wayne Lauga, who have a seven-year-old daughter together, separated and both have since met new partners.
In the often dirty world of state politics, Ms Lauga cried foul after the 2020 election which she won with a preference deal with the Greens party.
She described it as an ‘ugly’ election campaign after One Nation put up campaign posters which blasted: ‘Dear Brittany, you can’t be trusted’.
‘These signs are defamatory and, in the end, backfired,’ Ms Lauga said after the election. ‘The signs falsely claim that I can’t be trusted.
‘Well, the vote would tell you that the people of Keppel trust me.’
But following former Premier Palaszczuk’s shock resignation last December, Ms Lauga will likely need to campaign widely and effectively to safeguard her seat in what is predicted to be a tought fight for Labor to retain power in the state.
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