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SCOTT:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Scott Mitchell, filling in for Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Personal text messages between Brittany Higgins and her partner David Sharaz, have been splashed through the news for days – reopening questions about the lead up to the interview when Higgins first went public with the allegation she was raped in a ministerial office.

The Coalition says the texts show evidence of “collusion” and “weaponisation” on the part of the Labor government.

But as the political scandal spirals, the source of the texts, the motives for leaking them, and the consequences of them being published have mostly gone unexamined.

Today, contributing editor to The Politics at themonthly.com.au, Rachel Withers, on the Brittany Higgins leak – and what it really says about our media.

It’s Wednesday, June 14.

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SCOTT:

Rachael, last week we've seen Brittany Higgins personal text messages leaked to the media, and we've seen more and more detail emerge over days of coverage. What do we know about how these texts — something Higgins never would have imagined would be made public — ended up being published for all to see.

RACHEL:

Yeah. So these text exchanges were mostly published by The Australian newspaper. That's where it started. It's being led by the Australian reporter Janet Albrechtsen, who has been going hard against Brittany Higgins for some time. They're mostly text messages that were stored on Higgins’ phone, which were handed over as evidence in the criminal trial against Bruce Lehrmann. The source of the leak is unclear, but it's pretty clear that they came from the criminal trial, which, of course, was discharged last year due to juror misconduct. But Bruce Lehrmann has always strenuously maintained his innocence. There are multiple private messages between Higgins and her partner, David Sharaz, discussing the coverage of the case. And there were texts that were sent before Brittany first went public with her allegation. And that was on February 15, 2021, first in a news.com.au article, and then in an interview that aired later that evening on Channel 10’s The Project.

And also included in the leaks, is a recording of a conversation between Higgins, Sharaz, Lisa Wilkinson from The Project, and her producer Angus Llewellyn.

Archival tape – Angus Llewelyn:

“Was there any time between Sunday morning waking up where you thought? 'Yeah, I should call the cops about this.'”

Archival tape – Brittany Higgins:

“No, I was. I was too scared, on the basis of who it was, and the basis of where I worked.”

RACHEL:

And they talk about all sorts of topics, including how best to frame the story.

Archival tape – Lisa Wilkinson:

“The words that are swirling around in your head as a Liberal Party staffer at that point in time was, the Liberal Party's got a women problem. Yeah, and you heard about to, you know, put cherry on the top of the women problem cake.”

Archival tape – Brittany Higgins:

“Yeah, I know.”

RACHEL:

Which Labor MP might be sympathetic to her case.

Archival tape – Lisa Wilkinson:

“Oh, certainly Albo. Albo is a bit of a dead duck at the moment, but anyway”

Archival tape – Angus Llewelyn:

“Well, he was in the car crash, he got a lot of coverage out of that.”

RACHEL:

But what they all really go to is the lead up to that disclosure, and the moment the allegation became public and who knew what when.

SCOTT:

Right, and these text messages, they are, as you say, from Brittany Higgins’ phone. And we know Higgins was hesitant about handing her phone over to police during the criminal investigation. Rachel, isn't information like this — if it's handed over to police — meant to remain private and used to help investigators, not leaked to the newspapers?

RACHEL:

Absolutely. And Brittany Higgins was really apprehensive about giving her phone over to police. And that was one of the reasons that, allegedly, police formed a view that she was an unreliable witness. But a lot of that apprehensiveness was because she feared that her private conversations would become public, and would be used against her. And this obviously confirms those fears. Some of the contents of the phone was part of the brief of evidence at the trial. Presumably, anyone with access to that brief could have leaked it. So that means the Department of Public Prosecutions, the ACT police, Bruce Lehrmann's defence lawyers or other third parties. And under what's known as the Harman principle, lawyers who obtain material provided under subpoena in a court proceeding are precluded from providing it to others. And if a document is leaked to the media outlets who report on that content could risk being in contempt of court for publishing it, unless it's in the public interest. Lawyers for Lehrmann have denied that he leaked the content, and a judge in another matter, the defamation trial that's still going on involving Channel Ten, the judge in that case refused to administer interrogatories, or refused to basically demand that Lehrmann answer questions under oath about whether it was him who leaked it. But it is clear someone has leaked them, and it's not at all clear that it was in the public interest to do so.

SCOTT:

Right. So we could see legal ramifications for this in the coming weeks?

RACHEL:

Yeah, and I think we've seen something this week that Channel Ten has sent a legal notice to the ACT police over the leak of the tape.

SCOTT:

So then, Rachel, these text messages, they've caused debate actually inside Parliament House. Their contents have real political consequences. So tell me a bit about what's in these text messages.

RACHEL:

So I think one of the main texts that is causing political ramifications is one that was sent on the 11th of February 2021. David Sharaz texted Brittany Higgins saying “Katy is going to come to me with some questions you need to prepare for. She's really invested now haha.” Katy, of course, means Katy Gallagher, who is the current finance minister.

Sharaz goes on to say “She's an old friend. We opened a chair together so you can trust her.” And Higgins replied, “Going forward, pass my details on to Katy. I'm happy to talk to her.”

And then later that day Sharaz reportedly told Higgins “Katy Gallagher messaged me, she's angry and wants to help. She's got the context. Says they knew something was wrong because they fired Bruce and not you. They avoided a scandal.” So this is in reference to Bruce Lehrmann being fired for being in Parliament House for non-work purposes on the on the night of the alleged rape. So there is a whole other layer to the scandal here, which is that there was a whole report into what Scott Morrison's office knew and when, about the night in question, because we're talking about something that allegedly happened between two Liberal staffers in Parliament House, in a Liberal minister's office, which was Linda Reynolds’, outside of work hours.

SCOTT:

And that is now the other part of the story here, what Labor knew when and what they did with the information, which goes back to a heated exchange in senate estimates back in 2021, just after the allegations were made public, doesn’t it, Rachel?

RACHEL:

Yeah, Linda Reynolds was being questioned by Katy Gallagher and Penny Wong, and she said she was told by a Labor senator two weeks before the story broke what they were intending to do with the story in her office.

Archival tape – Linda Reynolds:

“I was told by one of your senators two weeks before about what you were intending to do with this story in my office, two weeks before.”

RACHEL:

To which Katy Gallagher replied that no one had any knowledge of the story.

Archival tape – Katy Gallagher:

“No one had any knowledge.”

SCOTT:

Right, so in 2021 at Senate Estimates, Linda Reynolds implies that Labor Senators had knowledge of this allegation before Higgins went public with it. Gallagher responds by saying no one had any knowledge about it. On the surface Rachel, these texts, they seem to throw doubt on that statement. So is the allegation, then, that Gallagher misled the senate?

RACHEL:

That's the accusation. And that's the line that's being pressed by the opposition really hard this week.

Archival tape – Susan Ley:

“If it is the case that any one, politician or journalist, weaponised and sought to politically profit from a rape allegation, then that is morally bankrupt.”

RACHEL:

The significance of this is that Katy Gallagher is now a minister, and the ministerial code of conduct dictates that if you misled Parliament, you have to resign. Although she wasn't actually a minister at the time of the claim. Anthony Albanese has thrown his weight behind Gallagher and said the texts don't show that she misled the Senate.

Archival tape – Unknown:

“Katy Gallagher has not misled Parliament?”

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“Absolutely. She's a great finance minister and she's a great minister for the status of….”

RACHEL:

Other Labor ministers have also backed her.

Archival tape – Richard Marles:

“Katie is a person of enormous integrity.”

RACHEL:

Now, on Tuesday, Katy Gallagher gave a speech to the senate, responding directly to these allegations – she acknowledged she had some knowledge that Higgins was going to go public with her allegations, but she denies misleading the senate. She said back in 2021, she was denying that there was a Labor plan to weaponize Higgins’ story against the Morrison government.

Archival tape – Katy Gallagher:

“I was in no way involved in the timing in which this story was published or aired. Any allegation or assertion that I did, is wrong, and I reject it in the strongest possible terms.”

RACHEL:

And she criticised the way the text messages have been used politically.

Archival tape – Katy Gallagher:

“The events of the past week with the media coverage, the questions surrounding the publication of a young woman's personal phone records that had been provided for use in a court, splashed across TV and newspaper, with opposition members giddy with the coverage, has done nothing but seriously damage this confidence.”

RACHEL:

But the opposition is not backing down on this. So it’s going to be a very messy week in Parliament.

And the media, particularly the conservative media, has not let up. So this doesn’t look like it’s going away.

SCOTT:

We’ll be back after this.

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SCOTT:

Rachel, at the heart of this story is the question of whether or not any politicians sought to politically benefit from Higgins's story. How will we now get to the bottom of that? And what questions actually do need to be answered here?

RACHEL:

A few, you might remember Brittany Higgins made a personal injury claim against her former boss, Senator Linda Reynolds, which was settled, and she got a payout from the Commonwealth. Now Reynolds is questioning how that payment came about, considering Gallagher was finance minister at the time. And Reynolds is saying she's going to refer that settlement to the National Anti-Corruption Commission when it opens for business on July 1st. Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has backed those calls, as have other Coalition MPs. It remains to be seen whether this is the sort of thing the NACC will investigate, or whether this referral is just sort of part of the political games going on here, trying to increase pressure on the government. But equally there are still plenty of questions for the Coalition to answer that we never got answers to. On the weekend, The Australian reported allegations by Reynolds’ former chief of staff, Fiona Brown, that Scott Morrison himself actually misled Parliament over this issue.

Archival tape – Anthony Albanese:

“The question just goes to whether the Prime Minister has asked his senior staff member about the declaration made by Ms. Higgins, about whether that is accurate, whether he has raised it with the member of his own staff.”

RACHEL:

Brown said that after the allegations became public Scott Morrison told Question Time that he talked with Brown directly to find out if everything had been handled appropriately.

Archival tape – Scott Morrison:

“I've had conversations about the support provided by the member of my staff now. She, Mr. Speaker, was working as the chief of Staff to the Minister for Defence Industry at the time. Now I have discussed those matters with her, and the support provided, and she indeed has indicated to me some appreciation that was also provided to her at the time, in the messages that were sent to her.”

RACHEL:

But she says he never actually came to talk to her about it. And he simply came back from that Question Time in which he told Parliament that he had spoken to her and said, “We've talked, haven't we?” And she was really hurt when she realised that he was basically just making sure he was covering himself for what he just said in Parliament.
And on Tuesday, Morrison acknowledged that he may have misspoken when he said that in Parliament back in 2021. But he said he thought it was accurate at the time.

SCOTT:

And Rachel, this story, once again, is deteriorating into political scandal. But at the end of the day, we have highly embarrassing personal text messages of someone who engaged with a police investigation. Just what message is being sent by the way both our media and our politicians are using these text exchanges?

RACHEL:

Yeah, it's a sad reminder of the ways in which this story has become about so much more than Higgins. It's a battle of competing interests with the right wing media doing whatever they can to tear down this woman, and anyone who tried to stand up for her. There are so many people here claiming that they have Higgins best interests at heart, but it's clear that a very wide range of people did not, and still do not. Linda Reynolds and Fiona Scott in particular have had these really sympathetic profiles of them written by Albrechtsen, suggesting they were just trying to do what was best for Higgins.

Archival tape – Linda Reynolds:

“The real question is, is, should they have used Brittany Higgins' story? And I think abused her agency to hit, you know, to make a political hit job on the government. And should they actually do that to a fellow senator? Because what they did would never ever be legal or allowed in any other workplace.”

RACHEL:

And the Opposition is now focussed on using this to damage the Albanese government, and turning the who knew what when questions back on Labor, even though we still don't have answers as to who in the Morrison government knew what when about the incident when it occurred in 2019. And none of this appears to be in any way in the public interest. It's all about political point scoring and the whole thing just does so much damage to whatever limited trust victims are able to have in authorities, to be able to have confidence that if they come forward and accuse someone of assault, that their private correspondence won't be used against them.

SCOTT:

Rachel, as well, while any future trial was abandoned over fears for Brittany Higgins’ mental health, it appears events are once again going to be prosecuted in the court of public opinion. While it's not really the overt purpose of the story in the reporting in The Australian, there are elements that go to Higgins’ character. In one piece over the weekend, she was called “power hungry”. So what message does that send generally about who we believe, and who we don't?

RACHEL:

Yeah, I think the conservative media has always been desperate to portray Higgins in this as some kind of nefarious plotter because her allegations, which really kickstarted a reckoning, a very real reckoning in this country, when it came to the treatment of women in politics and in the workplace. Because it damaged the Morrison government so badly that they've always wanted to sort of paint her as some sort of opportunist.

The prime minister's office allegedly began a background against her partner very early on. We had another inquiry into that, in which the PMO found themselves innocent, and the Murdoch media has really leant into this idea that Higgins isn't the quote unquote “perfect victim”, because she didn't come forward straight away. But then she ultimately took agency and took control of the situation. Yes, She clearly used some of her media skills to decide how, and to whom to tell her story. So at the end of the day, I think what those behind these leaks really seem to care about is trying to bully and shame Higgins and, by extension, any woman who tries to make allegations against powerful men or political entities. And that simply can't be allowed to stand.

SCOTT:

Rachel, thank you so much for your time.

RACHEL:

Thanks, Scott.

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SCOTT:

Also in the news today…

The driver of a bus that crashed after a wedding in the NSW Hunter Valley on Sunday, killing 10 people, has been granted bail.

The 58 year old man, Brett Andrew Button, was released with strict conditions yesterday.

Police allege the vehicle was travelling too quickly when it entered a roundabout, before overturning and hitting a guardrail.

And…

The federal government has made a concession to try and get its Housing Australia Future Fund legislation through parliament.

Negotiations with the senate crossbench and The Greens have been going on for months.

Now Labor is promising a half-billion dollar per year spend on social and affordable housing, from 2024. But it hasn’t given way on The Greens’ demand for a rent freeze.

I’m Scott Mitchell, this is 7am. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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