Katy Gallagher has denied misleading parliament over her knowledge of Brittany Higgins’ rape allegation, hitting back at the Coalition over their “giddy” reaction to leaked text messages.
The minister for finance and women made a personal explanation to the Senate on Tuesday, after Peter Dutton claimed Labor had used the complaint for “political purposes” and “conspired” to maximise the damage to the Morrison government.
Earlier the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, told caucus that Labor would back Gallagher “1,000%” because the then opposition had acted “responsibly the whole way through” in seeking accountability for “a young woman [who] was let down terribly by the previous government”.
The former prime minister Scott Morrison also offered a personal explanation for an allegation by his former director of operations, Fiona Brown, that he misled parliament about whether he had spoken to her about Higgins’ claim that her job had been threatened.
On 15 February 2021 Higgins first went public with her allegation that her former colleague Bruce Lehrmann raped her in minister Linda Reynolds’ office in March 2019.
Lehrmann was charged but vehemently denied the allegations and maintained his innocence. An initial trial was aborted last year due to jury misconduct and prosecutors dropped the charges against Lehrmann amid concerns about the impact a second trial could have on Higgins’ mental health.
Gallagher has come under fire for telling Senate estimates in June 2021 that “no one had any knowledge” of Higgins’ allegation before it was aired, a statement called into question by leaked text exchanges between Higgins and her partner, David Sharaz.
On Tuesday Gallagher told the Senate that she had “always acted ethically and with basic human decency on all matters to do with Ms Higgins and will continue to do so”.
Gallagher denied misleading the Senate, explaining that her statement was a response to Reynolds saying she “knew where this started” because she had been tipped off by a Labor senator two weeks before the allegation was aired about “what you were intending to do” with the story.
Gallagher said she was “shocked at the assertion … with the clear implication that I was responsible or had some involvement with making that story public”.
“The allegations that were made public were done so on Ms Higgins’ own terms. Those are the facts, facts that appear to have been lost in the past week.
“I was provided with information in the days before the allegations were first reported and I did nothing with that information. Absolutely nothing. I was asked to keep it to myself and I did.
“I was not involved in any way with the story that went to air on the night [of 15 February 2021] or was reported online that morning.
“Any allegation or assertion that I did is wrong and I reject it in the strongest possible terms.”
Gallagher said that “those who owed Ms Higgins a direct duty of care had known of this for almost two years and did nothing to make changes or improve culture and safety in the workplace where this incident had occurred”.
Gallagher posed a series of “unanswered questions”, including when those in the Morrison government first became aware, what actions they took, whom they shared the information with and why they had not released the “secret Gaetjens report” into the issue, commissioned by Morrison.
“It does seem strange to me that I am providing a statement to the Senate but those that were much closer to the events in 2019 have not done,” she said.
Morrison on Tuesday also denied allegations he had misled parliament about whether he’d spoken to her regarding Higgins’ claims that her job was under threat. Those allegations were levelled by Brown, Morrison’s former staff member and one-time Reynolds staffer.
On Saturday Brown told the Australian that on 18 February 2021 Morrison incorrectly replied in question time that he had spoken to her about Higgins’ claim that her job had been threatened. Morrison then approached Brown afterward and said “we’ve spoken, haven’t we”, she claimed.
On Tuesday Morrison told the house: “While I believed my response to be accurate at the time, I cannot obviously fully discount [Brown’s] recollection of those events now were the more accurate.
“I reject absolutely any suggestion of deliberate intent in any such possible inaccuracy in my response and I’m pleased to have taken the first opportunity available to me to clarify these matters to the house.”
He said that week was an “extremely busy week”, with numerous briefings and responding to more than a dozen questions in parliament. Morrison said he strongly believed Brown and Reynolds’ office had done all possible to respond to Higgins’ allegations at the time.
“Allegations of sexual violence against women should be addressed in our justice system. They should not be cynically prosecuted in the public square for politics, as has sadly been increasingly revealed in these issues,” he said.
In question time, Albanese deflected a question about when the “prime minister’s office” knew of the complaint by noting that Morrison’s office had not released the Gaetjens report. He denied Gallagher had misled the Senate.
The environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, reiterated her comments that “nobody tells me what to ask in question time”, adding that she would “would not have been doing [her] job” as shadow women’s minister if she had not asked about the Morrison government’s handling.
Earlier, Albanese told the Labor caucus its opponents “know no limits to opportunism”, adding that it was “mind-boggling” that they tried to make Labor appear responsible in some way.
“[Gallagher is] a person of extraordinary integrity,” he said. “The attack on Katy Gallagher is unfair, unjustified and unscrupulous. There will be no backwards steps taken.”
Albanese argued the Labor opposition would not have been doing its job if it hadn’t pursued the government’s handling of the complaint, noting that its advocacy had resulted in the Jenkins review. “A young woman was let down terribly by the previous government,” he said.
In the Coalition party room, Dutton accused Labor politicians of using “an alleged rape victim for political purposes”, claiming it was an “open and shut case” that Gallagher had misled the Senate.
“It’s increasingly clear that a group of Labor operatives conspired to maximise the damage. It was absolutely brazen. Labor used an alleged rape victim for political purposes,” Dutton told the room, according to a party room spokesperson.
