Closing arguments in a defamation case brought against Brittany Higgins by her former boss the Liberal senator Linda Reynolds are expected to be heard on Monday.
Reynolds is suing Higgins over social media posts made after the former political staffer alleged she had been raped by her colleague Bruce Lehrmann in the then defence minister’s office in Parliament House.
Lehrmann denies raping Higgins and his criminal trial was derailed by juror misconduct.
The senator has argued that the posts contained mistruths that she believes damaged her reputation. Higgins is in part claiming a defence of truth, saying Reynolds mishandled her rape allegation and did not properly support her.
Higgins’ lawyer, Rachael Young, has told the court the defence case would demonstrate that Reynolds’ claims she was not aware of Higgins’ alleged rape by 1 April 2019 – when Higgins and Reynolds held their only meeting on the matter – were “not credible”.
She also told the court she would show that claims of a conspiracy by Higgins and her now husband, David Sharaz, to harm the senator’s reputation were wrong.
The Western Australia supreme court was expected to hear from Higgins during the case but it was announced last week that she would not be giving evidence. Young said her client, who is now pregnant, would not travel to Perth from her home in France.
The lawyer said there were three reasons behind the decision. “The first is the defendant is not obliged to go into oral evidence,” she said.
“The second is … we don’t think we need to call Ms Higgins to satisfy Your Honour as to being successful in these proceedings.
“The third is a matter of Ms Higgins’ medical state.”
Young said Higgins’ condition would be detailed in confidential medical reports to be filed with the court.
Outside the court Reynolds’ lawyer, Martin Bennett, said his client was being denied an opportunity to test Higgins. “Linda Reynolds has waited years to vindicate her reputation and this is the day – but these things happen in trials,” he said.
Reynolds’ former chief of staff Fiona Brown was also exempted from giving evidence last week after her psychiatric report and a medical report were provided to the court.
The court has heard from a slew of politicians, journalists, staffers and family and friends of Higgins and Reynolds.
Bennett opened the trial by saying that “every fairytale needs a villain” and claiming that Higgins and Sharaz had schemed to ambush the WA senator as part of a sophisticated media plan.
He said Higgins had created a “fictional story of political cover-up”, detailing ill treatment, ostracisation and bullying, but “none of it was true”.
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Young said it had “never been a fairytale” for her client, and those comments were “misplaced, harassing and re-traumatising”.
The former foreign affairs minister Marise Payne told the trial that the forcefulness of the political attacks on Reynolds after Higgins’ allegations about a cover-up was rarely seen in parliament.
The former prime minister Scott Morrison defended Reynolds’ handling of the alleged rape and dismissed claims of a government cover-up as “completely and utterly false”.
Another former chief of staff for Reynolds, Alexandra Kelton, gave evidence on Tuesday by video link, telling the court that Reynolds had been shocked by a news.com.au story detailing the handling of Higgins’ allegation.
“She seemed genuinely extremely surprised by what was reported in the article,” Kelton said.
Text messages between Sharaz and the News Corp journalist Samantha Maiden were also tendered as evidence.
The messages showed Higgins had begun “regretting” going public about her alleged rape and was concerned that the Morrison government was going to “discredit” her.
“That’s her biggest fear,” Sharaz wrote in one message, quoting Higgins as saying “they’re going to discredit me. I’m not going to have an impact. No one goes for Morrison and gets away with it.”
Reynolds was also suing Sharaz for defamation. In April Sharaz said he would not fight the case as he could not afford to pay the legal costs to defend himself.
The trial before Justice Paul Tottle continues.
– Australian Associated Press contributed to this report
