The most interesting thing about writing about the Brittany Higgins case — now suddenly resituated by the last 24 hours in the Senate — is that it is impossible to do so without, in a general sense, skirting libel against one party or another. Either Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins had a sexual encounter in Parliament House or they didn’t. If they did, it was either consensual or it wasn’t.
The branching lines of this decision tree favour Lehrmann, since in two of the three scenarios he is innocent of any crime (and has not been convicted or re-prosecuted for any crime). But the content of the allegations tips the balance concerning his reputation the other way. That’s an assessment of the culture, not of his case. If someone is accused of fraud, we are quite capable of keeping an open mind. Allegations of sexual crime weigh the other way.
But whatever the ins and outs of the discontinued criminal charges, the case became something else when Higgins received a compensation payment from the incoming Albanese government in a stunningly rapid process, and with a price tag believed to be $3 million. (Higgins has rejected this payment estimation, though without divulging the amount.)
At that point, it became our business, because there is a widespread perception that a process — one that might have yielded a different result had it been subject to more sustained consideration — was rushed for dual purpose, both political.
The first purpose was that a rapid judgment and payment would close the lid on any revelations concerning Labor involvement becoming a cause célèbre, and a political weapon against a Morrison government already suffering a bad image on gender relations. The second was that the outgoing Morrison government would wear the blame for the big payout — just another product of its slack, reactionary nature.
So with a taxpayer-funded settlement handed to a former staffer who was part of a well-connected network, and who waged both a well-designed grassroots campaign and a slick media one, we’re entitled to ask questions about it. If that inquiry is used by the opposition for political gain, tough. Political gain occurs when you light on something the public thinks matters. It may reverse on them, as some say. At this stage, one doubts it. The details are out of most people’s grasp. The big picture is a little more stark.
That big picture is that whatever happened to Brittany Higgins, she, her partner and others were running a sustained, planned and strategised media campaign around her accusations. Now, that of itself has no bearing on whether Higgins’ accusation of rape is true or not. No behaviour after an alleged rape should of itself be taken as evidence of what did or didn’t happen. Higgins may still be a victim of a crime.
But she’s not a capital-V Victim, as the now largely dispelled movement around her presented her to be. We’re generally required to leave our brains at the office door in these matters. However, we’re not required to leave our brains at the security entrance in the little plastic dish, with our keys and phone. Higgins and co did what their role as political advisers trained them to do: they strategised with their assets to maximum advantage. The Higgins we see in leaked texts is capable of distancing herself from what she alleges to be a crime against her, and of considering the best placement of stories, sorting allies from enemies, and so on.
That is not the Victim of contemporary accounts of a sex crime, so traumatised as to be incapable of steering rational and strategic action. Yet when the case against Lehrmann began, and Higgins faced cross-examination, her account of events and aftermath came apart. Then, purportedly, so did she. It was claimed she had wandered off in a daze and had to spend time in a mental health facility. Which meant her cross-examination was interrupted and the whole rhythm broken, before the trial collapsed altogether due to juror misconduct.
So again, it’s quite possible that a young victim of a crime who had been focused and determined to make her case visible could then come apart under the tough process of cross-examination. But if we are to take Lehrmann’s legal innocence seriously, we can offer the alternative possibility: that Higgins saw that her case had come apart in an afternoon, and that the only way of getting out of further sessions that would demolish it was to have a health excuse to suspend the cross-examination.
That comes up against the moral affirmation that one should “believe women” on sex crime claims. That has varying degrees of validity, strongest where there’s no form of visible gain from lying. But the more potential gain there is, the more a paradoxical effect kicks in: a false claim of rape — either the misconstruction of a consensual encounter or cut from whole cloth — has a greater chance of sticking, precisely because of the widespread adoption of the “believe women” rule. The harder it is to counterfeit a currency, the greater the reward when you manage to do so.
The brutal, ugly and, let’s face it, entrancing details coming out concerning this case are largely to do with whether Labor did or did not “weaponise” a serious matter in a cynical fashion, in a process drawing tightly together the Higgins push, progressive media stars and Labor. The suggestion that the accusation at the base of it all must be, can only be, true, is ludicrous. Whatever the truth of what she claimed, Higgins had about as much motive as anyone has ever had to make a false sex crime claim.
Being found naked and asleep on your boss’s office sofa is a career killer, obviously. Not only does it show your boss that you’re neither serious nor reliable, but when it gets out, you’d be a laughing stock, and that would stick to your boss as well, especially a woman boss. What’s the one thing, the one thing that turns an episode of absurdity into one of utmost seriousness? When a frivolous and stupid encounter becomes a violent and tragic example of the scourge of our time, and the main figure in it goes from fool to victim-hero.
We are supposed to pretend there is no possibility that this is the case. We are supposed to ignore the fact that this has occurred in a milieu of people who have chosen as their profession that of political adviser, whose prerequisite in our time is a willingness to lie cynically and strategically at every opportunity. And they’re Liberals! People who purport not to believe in structural oppression, but in the power of the autonomous individual.
Come on, what do you really think such people think of the goofy, lumpy progressive men and women who turned up to the rallies to protest the treatment of women in Parliament? Have these people ever shown any previous signs of wanting to have anything to do with you? Is it possible they’re laughing at you, the ease with which you’ll flock wide-eyed to a cause? Give ’em a white dress and a Victim narrative and you can march on the capital.
Surely you can see that these people laugh at you and hold you in contempt? That their identity, in our era, is grounded not in the idea of representing or serving the public but of using and manipulating it in a way that renders us as little more than object or pretext. Quite aside from that, applying automatic and unquestioning capital-V Victim framing to such people when they’re women has nothing to do with feminism; it’s a re-Victorianisation, in which women are incapable of strategic self-interest.
Had no payout been made, this would be of no public interest. But we are entitled to ask whether a combination of political expediency and popular ideology has allowed a cosy circle of elites to gift possibly millions of our money to one of their number, for the benefit of all concerned. We’re entitled to read the texts that led up to it. If Labor suffers from this encounter, it may well learn a hard lesson.
Michael Bradley says he wouldn’t walk a mile in Brittany Higgins’ shoes. Since by now they may well be $5000 Louboutins, that would hardly be possible. But he can try, next time they’re taken off at security and left in the little plastic tray — where we’re encouraged to leave our brains.
