{"id":76426,"date":"2026-08-20T07:47:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T07:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/76426\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T07:47:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T07:47:14","slug":"former-chief-of-staff-to-linda-reynolds-received-1-48m-payout-over-impact-of-brittany-higgins-rape-allegation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/76426\/","title":{"rendered":"Former chief of staff to Linda Reynolds received $1.48m payout over impact of Brittany Higgins rape allegation"},"content":{"rendered":"

The former political staffer to whom Brittany Higgins first disclosed her rape allegation has received a $1.48 million payout from the Commonwealth in a settlement over claims her workplace rights were compromised in the fallout of the scandal.<\/p>\n

Fiona Brown took her claims to Fair Work last year, arguing she was effectively made a scapegoat for the Morrison government in the wake of Ms Higgins publicly airing allegations<\/a> she had been raped by Bruce Lehrmann at Parliament House.<\/p>\n

At the time, Ms Brown was the chief of staff for then Liberal senator Linda Reynolds and became a central figure in both Mr Lehrmann’s aborted criminal trial, as well as his later defamation case.<\/p>\n

The Federal Court found, on the balance of probabilities, Ms Higgins was raped by Mr Lehrmann in Senator Reynolds’s office, but Justice Michael Lee did not accept claims that the government or Ms Brown had concealed the assault.<\/p>\n

A separate WA Supreme Court defamation trial brought by Senator Reynolds against Ms Higgins also dismissed claims of a cover-up.<\/p>\n

Mr Lehrmann continues to maintain his innocence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Fair Work case settled in mediation<\/p>\n

Ms Brown’s Fair Work case centred on allegations that she was effectively made a scapegoat for the government as it scrambled to respond to Ms Higgins’s allegations.<\/p>\n

The veteran public servant alleged media questions addressed to her were answered without her oversight and she was denied a right to defend herself.<\/p>\n

Part of her case centred on a tense Question Time in the days after the allegations, when then-prime minister Scott Morrison faced a barrage of questions about Ms Higgins’s story from then-opposition leader Anthony Albanese.<\/p>\n

\"Brittany<\/p>\n

Brittany Higgins disclosed her rape allegation to Fiona Brown, who was chief of staff to Senator Linda Reynolds at the time. (AAP Image: Richard Wainwright)<\/p>\n

Ms Brown claimed she felt “frightened” and “intimidated” when she said Mr Morrison had falsely told parliament he had spoken with her about Ms Higgins when he had not.<\/p>\n

Ms Brown also said the former prime minister had refused to talk to her after the story broke, except to tell her that they had discussed the matter.<\/p>\n

The case was due to head to trial next March, with Mr Morrison and other senior public servants expected to be called as witnesses.<\/p>\n

But it was settled through a mediation process earlier this month.<\/a><\/p>\n

Part of the agreement included the ability for Ms Brown to make public the settlement amount \u2014 a detail usually kept confidential by non-disclosure agreements.<\/p>\n

The settlement did not include admissions of liability or an apology by the Commonwealth.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for the federal Attorney General Michelle Rowland said it “would not be appropriate for the Commonwealth to provide further commentary.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The former political staffer to whom Brittany Higgins first disclosed her rape allegation has received a $1.48 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76427,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17614,22,21,29900,29899,6427,27619,113330,113331,30004,36782],"class_list":["post-76426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-act-supreme-court","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-brittany-higgins","tag-bruce-lehrmann","tag-commonwealth","tag-fair-work","tag-fiona-brown","tag-linda-reynolds","tag-settlement","tag-workplace-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76426"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76426\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76427"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}