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How the Brittany Higgins case caused panic in Prime Minister's office · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, February four, twenty twenty six. Police are worried
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  Speaker 1: there are major security challenges surrounding next week's visit by
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  Speaker 1: Israeli President Isaac Hertzog. He will visit Sydney, Canberra and
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  Speaker 1: Melbourne and copse embracing for pro Palestine rallies and demonstrations.
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  Speaker 1: That mean every event has to have a detailed evacuation
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  Speaker 1: plan and a way to keep Jewish community members safe.
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  Speaker 1: That's an exclusive live now at Beaustralian dot com dot au.
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  Speaker 1: Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison faces new accusations he froze
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  Speaker 1: out and victimized a senior staffer after the rape of
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  Speaker 1: Brittany Higgins. It comes from Fiona Brown, whose career was
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  Speaker 1: destroyed by false allegations from Higgins that she tried to
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  Speaker 1: cover up the rape. Now Brown says, in a statement
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  Speaker 1: of claim lodged with the Federal Court that the former
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  Speaker 1: PM's top advisors gagged her and that she felt frightened
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  Speaker 1: and intimidated by Morrison's actions. That's today's story. When Brittaney
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  Speaker 1: Higgins in twenty twenty one, told her story of having
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  Speaker 1: been raped inside Parliament House two years earlier, allegedly by
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  Speaker 1: fellow staff of Bruce Lahman. It wasn't just a story
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  Speaker 1: of rape. It was the tale of how she was
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  Speaker 1: pressured by senior government figures not to pursue the story
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  Speaker 1: for fear of damaging Scott Morrison's chances of reelection, And
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  Speaker 1: so I would.
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  Speaker 2: I would try and raise it, and I would try
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  Speaker 2: and bring it up.
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  Speaker 3: Then it was always it always sort of came back
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  Speaker 3: to sort of being a mere issue.
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  Speaker 2: And I say, if you can't deal with it, then
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  Speaker 2: you can leave.
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  Speaker 1: Morrison initially tried to tough it out, but quickly buckled
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  Speaker 1: under immense public pressure to seem as if he understood.
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  Speaker 4: Jenny and I spoke last night and she said to me,
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  Speaker 4: you have to think about this as a father first.
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  Speaker 4: What would you want to happen if it were our girls?
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  Speaker 4: Jenny has a way of clarifying things, always has.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't enough for Higgins. I didn't want his sympathy
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  Speaker 1: as a father.
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  Speaker 4: I wanted him to use his power as Prime minister.
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  Speaker 1: Nor for activist Grace Tame, who rode a wave of
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  Speaker 1: public anger and what were seen as Morrison's failings.
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  Speaker 3: On the seventeenth of August last year, not five months
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  Speaker 3: after being named Australian of the Year, I received a
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  Speaker 3: threatening phone call from a senior member of a government
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  Speaker 3: funded organization asking for my word that I wouldn't say
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  Speaker 3: anything damning about the Prime Minister, you know, with an
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  Speaker 3: election coming soon.
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  Speaker 1: And in Parliament the then Labor opposition tried to make
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  Speaker 1: the most of the rage. Does the Minister accept that
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  Speaker 1: Miss Higgins felt pressured not to proceed. In her original
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  Speaker 1: Project interview, Brittany Higgins described in detail the actions she
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  Speaker 1: said constituted pressure from her former bosses, Minister Linda Reynolds
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  Speaker 1: and Chief of Staff Fiona Brown, minimizing and ignoring her rape.
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  Speaker 5: She made me in that program with the Project, more
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  Speaker 5: of the villain than Bruce Lahman. I was framed as
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  Speaker 5: the perpetrator in that interview.
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  Speaker 1: This is Fiona Brown talking to the Australians Stephen Rice
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  Speaker 1: and Janet Albretson in twenty twenty three.
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  Speaker 5: All you have is your name. That's what you come
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  Speaker 5: in with, is what you go out with your name,
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  Speaker 5: and so that's what I did.
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  Speaker 1: The Federal Court has found that on the balance of probabilities.
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  Speaker 1: Brittany Higgins was raped by Bruce Laman, a charge he denies.
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  Speaker 1: Justice Michael Lee also found there was no evidence of
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  Speaker 1: a conspiracy to cover up the rape, a finding backed
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  Speaker 1: in a separate court proceeding by West Australian Supreme Court
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  Speaker 1: Judge Paul Tottle, who said this of Higgins, we've used
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  Speaker 1: a voice actor to bring you his words.
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  Speaker 2: The defendant had persuaded herself there had been a cover up,
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  Speaker 2: even though that conclusion was not supported by the facts.
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  Speaker 1: Fiona Brown has always told a very different story. Brown
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  Speaker 1: says that when she realized something had happened late at
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  Speaker 1: night to Brittney Higgins, she personally walked Higgins to the
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  Speaker 1: police office within Parliament House and offered her counseling and assistance.
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  Speaker 1: In the Federal Court trial, Brown gave evidence that instead
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  Speaker 1: of covering up the rape, Linda Reynolds had ordered Brown
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  Speaker 1: to go to the police, but that Brown resisted, saying
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  Speaker 1: she wanted to support Higgins, who at that time was
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  Speaker 1: saying she didn't want cops involved. And now Fiona Brown
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  Speaker 1: has filed papers of her own in the Federal Court
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  Speaker 1: in which she tells a remarkable story that brings it
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  Speaker 1: all back around to Scott Morrison. Stephen Rice is The
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  Speaker 1: Australian's New South Wales editor, Ricey. We rarely get an
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  Speaker 1: insight into how government at the most senior levels operates.
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  Speaker 1: This is a pretty secret world. Fiona Brown paints a
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  Speaker 1: picture of the Prime Minister's office in panic when they
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  Speaker 1: first started hearing that stories were coming about Britney Higgins.
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  Speaker 1: How according to Fiona Brown in her statement of claim,
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  Speaker 1: did the staff in Morrison's office react to her and
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  Speaker 1: ask her to behave.
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  Speaker 2: Well, they reacted very badly as far as Fiona was concerned.
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  Speaker 2: They wanted to shut the whole thing down, and they
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  Speaker 2: appear to have felt that the best way to get
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  Speaker 2: rid of it was to freeze Fiona Brown out of
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  Speaker 2: all of it and just take it on themselves to
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  Speaker 2: try to kill the story, deal with the story as
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  Speaker 2: best they can. But part of their feeling seems to be,
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  Speaker 2: at least what they were telling her was it'll all
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  Speaker 2: go away, don't worry about it. These things don't last.
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  Speaker 2: Even without the benefit of hindsight. That was, you know,
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  Speaker 2: for some pretty experienced media hands. They clearly didn't have
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  Speaker 2: any idea how to deal with something of this magnitude.
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  Speaker 1: In almost the most surprising of ways, Ricey. This is
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  Speaker 1: coming back around to Scott Morrison. The allegation from Brittany Higgins,
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  Speaker 1: which Morrison has always denied, was that there was a
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  Speaker 1: cover up at the highest levels and it was all
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  Speaker 1: about making sure Scott Morrison got reelected. Brown and Linda
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  Speaker 1: Reynolds have said and two courts have agreed that they
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  Speaker 1: were not part of any conspiracy at all. But what
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  Speaker 1: Fiona Brown is describing is senior staff who were reacting
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  Speaker 1: to this as a political story, weren't they They were.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, let's get one thing very clear that neither
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  Speaker 2: Linda Reynolds nor Fiona Brown was involved in any kind
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  Speaker 2: of cover up, and that's been established now by two
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  Speaker 2: very senior judges. But it does appear that when this
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  Speaker 2: story broke, there were senior people in the Morrison government
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  Speaker 2: who were prepared to I won't say go to any lengths,
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  Speaker 2: but who I think acted from what Fiona Brown is saying,
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  Speaker 2: who acted poorly in the way that they dealt with this.
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  Speaker 2: And part of that was that they literally froze Fiona
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  Speaker 2: Brown out of the whole process. They wouldn't let her
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  Speaker 2: in on their meetings. They asked her for her evidence,
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  Speaker 2: but then apparently didn't do anything with it. At times,
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  Speaker 2: it seems they actually hid questions from her that were
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  Speaker 2: being asked by the media. For what reason, who knows,
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  Speaker 2: but it didn't give her any opportunity to respond. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: not forget. There was a conflagration going on outside. The
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  Speaker 2: media was hounding her. There were questions being asked under
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  Speaker 2: parliamentary privilege in Parliament that completely skewered Fiona Brown as
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  Speaker 2: having in some way connived in or overlooked the rape
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  Speaker 2: of Britney Higgins for political reasons. It was a very
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  Speaker 2: febrile atmosphere and Fiona Brown was really given no chance
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  Speaker 2: at all to present her side of the story.
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  Speaker 1: Especially when Fiona Brown's story, as she has always maintained it,
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  Speaker 1: this is her version of events, was good for the government,
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  Speaker 1: according to her. She took Brittany Higgins to the police
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  Speaker 1: office in Parliament House she encouraged. She in fact received
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  Speaker 1: warm text messages from Britney Higgins thanking her for her help.
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  Speaker 1: You've been around politics and around journalism for a long time, Ricey.
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  Speaker 1: We've seen what happens when politicians don't know how to respond,
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  Speaker 1: But it seems very unusual that they would not reveal
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  Speaker 1: information at that stage that would have helped them.
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  Speaker 2: Look, it doesn't make sense. I find it inexplicable that
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  Speaker 2: you had these very seasoned political operatives in Morrison's office
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  Speaker 2: who had a good message to sell. It was Fiona
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  Speaker 2: Brown who had led Britney Higgins down to the AFP
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  Speaker 2: office in Parliament House to report this. As you say,
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  Speaker 2: they had a glowing text that Brittany had sent to
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  Speaker 2: Fiona Brown only a couple of months after the incident,
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  Speaker 2: which was absolutely praising Fiona for the great help that
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  Speaker 2: she'd given her during that whole period. They had that
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  Speaker 2: in their hands. Why didn't they offer that to the media.
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  Speaker 2: They didn't Scott.
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  Speaker 1: Morrison as the kind of lightning rod for rage and
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  Speaker 1: anger about this whole issue. I think it was treated
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  Speaker 1: a little bit unfairly in some public discourse. You know,
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  Speaker 1: he was slated for saying, oh, I talked to Jenny,
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  Speaker 1: and Jenny talked me through why this was significant. I
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  Speaker 1: think he was reacting like many middle aged men might,
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  Speaker 1: a little bit clumsily in his language, but there's no
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  Speaker 1: suggestion that he didn't actually grasp that a rape was
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  Speaker 1: bad or was serious. But it's Scott Morrison's interactions with
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  Speaker 1: Fiona Brown that are odd and interesting if we had
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  Speaker 1: to believe what she says in her statement of claim.
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  Speaker 1: Fiona Brown says that Morrison initially shunned her completely, then
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  Speaker 1: said publicly that he had spoken to her, and then,
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  Speaker 1: according to her, kind of lent on her to make
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  Speaker 1: that true, even though it wasn't.
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  Speaker 2: Said we've spoken, haven't we, When she says that was
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  Speaker 2: absolutely untrue. They had never done that, and she says
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  Speaker 2: that she was intimidated by that. She immediately agreed and
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  Speaker 2: she was bewildered. She actually didn't know what was happening
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  Speaker 2: at that point until she thought about it afterwards and
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  Speaker 2: realized that he was trying to put into her mouth
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  Speaker 2: something that didn't actually happen.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up more of my conversation with Stephen Rice. Now,
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  Speaker 1: of course Scott Morrison has always denied wrongdoing. This is
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  Speaker 1: a statement of claim, so she gets to have her say.
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  Speaker 1: We're not going to hear his side of the story
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  Speaker 1: for a very long time until and if this matter
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  Speaker 1: makes its way to court. But this is part of
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  Speaker 1: a fair work claim by Fiona Brown against the Commonwealth.
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  Speaker 1: What does she want.
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  Speaker 2: She wants an acknowledgment that she was wronged by the government.
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  Speaker 2: In legal terms, she wants the court to find that
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  Speaker 2: there was a breach of the Fair Work Act, that
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  Speaker 2: the Commonwealth did not live up to its responsibilities to
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  Speaker 2: keep her safe in her working environment, and she wants
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  Speaker 2: some damages for that. Let's not forget that her life
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  Speaker 2: was destroyed by this whole episode. She hasn't been able
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  Speaker 2: to work since, her mental health in particular has been devastated,
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  Speaker 2: so she's hoping to get some justice out of this case.
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  Speaker 1: The Commonwealth is, though robustly defending this with some pretty
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  Speaker 1: expensive lawyers on they.
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  Speaker 2: Extraordinary the amount of money that they have thrown at
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  Speaker 2: defending this case. It would be remarkable enough anyway, even
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  Speaker 2: if you didn't contrast it to the amount of scrutiny
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  Speaker 2: that they gave to the two point four million dollars
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  Speaker 2: that they gave to Britney Higgins, which was no scrutiny
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  Speaker 2: at all. And part of Fiona Brown's claim is that
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  Speaker 2: she was further damaged because she was never given an
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  Speaker 2: opportunity to challenge the settlement that Britney Higgins got. Most
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  Speaker 2: people after that thought, well she got two point four
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  Speaker 2: million dollars. Her story must have been right, her story
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  Speaker 2: must have been examined properly, and therefore the allegations against
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  Speaker 2: Fiona Brown must be true. All of this just multiplied
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  Speaker 2: in terms of the damage that it was doing to
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  Speaker 2: Fiona Brown.
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  Speaker 1: Stephen Rice is The Australian's new South Wales editor. You
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  Speaker 1: can read this story and all Rice is reporting right
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  Speaker 1: now at the Australian dot com. Do reju