It was a story of an alleged rape in the halls of Parliament House and a covert cover-up, and like all “fairytales” WA Senator Linda Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett told the Supreme Court, it simply needed a villain.
It was a story of an alleged rape in the halls of Parliament House and a covert cover-up, and like all “fairytales”, WA Senator Linda Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett told the Supreme Court, it needed a villain.
Reynolds watched on from the front row of the public gallery as Bennett pored over the personal injury claim Higgins threatened to launch against the former defence minister, WA Senator Michaelia Cash and the Commonwealth in 2021 over its handling of the rape allegation, culminating in a $2.4 million settlement.
The court was shown photographs and correspondence from Higgins’ brief stint on the campaign trail in Perth ahead of the 2019 federal election, a six-week period during which she claims she was ostracised and shut in a hotel room seven days a week. Reynolds smiled at her partner Robert Reid as photographs flashed for the public gallery documenting her federal election campaign.
Bennett laid bare Reynolds’ response and that of her team to the security breach by Lehrmann and Higgins in entering the minister’s office after hours in March 2019 and the rape allegation that later surfaced. The former defence minister was already locked in an almost identical defamation row with Sharaz, who bowed out after declaring he did not have the financial means to take it to trial.
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