Linda Reynolds has launched bankruptcy proceedings against Brittany Higgins in an effort to claim more than $1m in damages and legal fees following her defamation win against her former staffer in August.
The former defence minister and Western Australian Liberal senator escalated the legal action on Friday in the federal court after taking similar action against Higgins’ husband, David Sharaz.
Higgins was ordered to pay Reynolds $315,000 in damages with an additional $26,109 in interest in August after a WA supreme court judge found Higgins had defamed Reynolds in social media posts. Sharaz is jointly liable for the damages, the court ruled, for his role in publishing a defamatory tweet and Instagram story.
Higgins and Sharaz were also ordered to pay for 80% of Reynolds’ legal costs – a figure expected to surpass $1m.
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Justice Paul Tottle ruled Higgins’ Instagram story on 4 July 2023 – which shared a screenshot of headlines publicising Reynolds’ intentions to refer Higgins’ $2.445m personal injury settlement to the federal anti-corruption body and accused her of mishandling her alleged rape and waging a campaign of harassment – was defamatory.
Tottle found Higgins had successfully defended another post accusing Reynolds of “silencing” sexual assault victim-survivors. Tottle said while he found the tweet was defamatory, Higgins’ legal team had successfully established the defence of honest opinion, fair comment and qualified privilege.
In September, Higgins’ legal team filed an appeal notice against the court’s judgment and orders to pay for Reynolds’ legal fees.
Reynolds’ legal team argued during the trial in August and September 2024 that the senior Liberal senator had been cast as a “villain” in Higgins’ “fairytale” of a political cover up after her staffer alleged in February 2021 that she had been sexually assaulted by a colleague in Reynolds’ ministerial office in March 2019 and then had been left unsupported by her boss.
Higgins told news.com.au and The Project that her alleged sexual assault had become a political “problem” for Reynolds and the wider Morrison government in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election.
The junior Liberal staffer alleged she had been made to choose between her future, either by working on the looming federal election in Perth for Reynolds, or by pausing her career aspirations to work remotely from the Gold Coast, where her support network was.
The court heard that Higgins had gone to the media to effect change in Parliament House after her alleged rape. Higgins’ lawyer, Rachael Young SC, said Higgins had felt professionally and personally isolated, and believed she had to stay quiet because her allegation was politically inconvenient.
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The verdict comes more than a year after a federal court judge ruled against Bruce Lehrmann in his defamation case against Network Ten and Lisa Wilkinson for airing Higgins’ sexual assault allegations against him.
Lehrmann denied the rape allegations and pleaded not guilty at his criminal trial in the Australian Capital Territory supreme court, which was aborted. Prosecutors did not seek a retrial due to concerns about Higgins’ mental health.
Justice Michael Lee found that Lehrmann had raped Higgins, on the balance of probabilities, on the minister’s couch in Parliament House in 2019.
Lehrmann is appealing the finding.
