Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz mocked Liberal senator Linda Reynolds after she suffered a breakdown in parliament, a court has been told.
Ms Higgins is fighting a defamation lawsuit launched by her former boss, Senator Reynolds, over a series of social media posts from 2023 that the ex-defence minister believes damaged her reputation.
The trial has heard Senator Reynolds had an emotional and physical breakdown after intense political attacks related to Ms Higgins’ alleged rape in parliament, and claims it was mishandled by the senator.
Senator Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett outlined a 2021 message exchange between Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz in which the couple discussed the senator’s political demise after she took three weeks’ leave.
“‘So Linda has delayed her return to work hahaha, three weeks’,” said one of the messages Mr Bennett read in the Western Australian Supreme Court on Wednesday.
“That means after estimates, if so you might get your retraction.”
Another said: “Wow, she’s done. You don’t take three weeks and come back”.
“So they mock the fact that the attack initiated on my client has caused her to go on sick leave,” Mr Bennett said during his closing submissions, as he reminded the court how Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz had allegedly executed a plan to harm the senator.
Senator Reynolds and her partner Robert Reid have previously given evidence that she was admitted to hospital over a cardiac disorder amid warnings she could die.
Mr Bennett also took Justice Paul Tottle to an email exchange between Ms Higgins and News Corp journalist Samantha Maiden, in which the former staffer is asked if the senator should resign.
Ms Higgins responds: “Fully off the record, I don’t think so”.
Mr Bennett said the “off-the-record” request was evidence that Ms Higgins didn’t want the admission to detract from her statements against her former boss days earlier when she went public with her rape allegation.
“It shows she didn’t have a genuine, honest belief in the allegations she was making,” he said.
“I think she was just following instructions.”
Mr Bennett said that in another of Mr Sharaz’s messages to Ms Higgins, he said: “Suck sh*t Linda, you awful human”.
Referring to then-prime minister Scott Morrison, Ms Higgins said: “He’s about to be F’d up … We’ve got him”.
Mr Bennett said that in another message, Ms Higgins said: “Honestly, I feel like a B-grade Grace Tame … Here I am in the mud with the pigs fighting for control of the daily news cycle, throwing mud.”
“‘A Whatsapp here, a voicemail there, a drop to (reporter Samantha Maiden)’,” he said reading the message.
“‘We’ve become quite a twosome when it came to game planning, my experience as a media advisor, David’s experience as a producer, together we understood how the gallery media sphere operated’.”
Ms Higgins alleged she was raped by fellow staffer Bruce Lehrmann in Senator Reynolds’ ministerial suite in March 2019.
Lehrmann has always denied the rape allegation and his criminal trial was derailed by juror misconduct.
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