Full Transcript for How the Brittany Higgins case caused panic in Prime Minister's office

00:00:04 Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Wednesday, February four, twenty twenty six. Police are worried there are major security challenges surrounding next week's visit by Israeli President Isaac Hertzog. He will visit Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne and copse embracing for pro Palestine rallies and demonstrations. That mean every event has to have a detailed evacuation plan and a way to keep Jewish community members safe. That's an exclusive live now at Beaustralian dot com dot au. Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison faces new accusations he froze out and victimized a senior staffer after the rape of Brittany Higgins. It comes from Fiona Brown, whose career was destroyed by false allegations from Higgins that she tried to cover up the rape. Now Brown says, in a statement of claim lodged with the Federal Court that the former PM's top advisors gagged her and that she felt frightened and intimidated by Morrison's actions. That's today's story. When Brittaney Higgins in twenty twenty one, told her story of having been raped inside Parliament House two years earlier, allegedly by fellow staff of Bruce Lahman. It wasn't just a story of rape. It was the tale of how she was pressured by senior government figures not to pursue the story for fear of damaging Scott Morrison's chances of reelection, And so I would. 00:01:40 Speaker 2: I would try and raise it, and I would try and bring it up. 00:01:42 Speaker 3: Then it was always it always sort of came back to sort of being a mere issue. 00:01:47 Speaker 2: And I say, if you can't deal with it, then you can leave. 00:01:51 Speaker 1: Morrison initially tried to tough it out, but quickly buckled under immense public pressure to seem as if he understood. 00:02:00 Speaker 4: Jenny and I spoke last night and she said to me, you have to think about this as a father first. What would you want to happen if it were our girls? Jenny has a way of clarifying things, always has. 00:02:25 Speaker 1: It wasn't enough for Higgins. I didn't want his sympathy as a father. 00:02:31 Speaker 4: I wanted him to use his power as Prime minister. 00:02:35 Speaker 1: Nor for activist Grace Tame, who rode a wave of public anger and what were seen as Morrison's failings. 00:02:43 Speaker 3: On the seventeenth of August last year, not five months after being named Australian of the Year, I received a threatening phone call from a senior member of a government funded organization asking for my word that I wouldn't say anything damning about the Prime Minister, you know, with an election coming soon. 00:03:10 Speaker 1: And in Parliament the then Labor opposition tried to make the most of the rage. Does the Minister accept that Miss Higgins felt pressured not to proceed. In her original Project interview, Brittany Higgins described in detail the actions she said constituted pressure from her former bosses, Minister Linda Reynolds and Chief of Staff Fiona Brown, minimizing and ignoring her rape. 00:03:36 Speaker 5: She made me in that program with the Project, more of the villain than Bruce Lahman. I was framed as the perpetrator in that interview. 00:03:48 Speaker 1: This is Fiona Brown talking to the Australians Stephen Rice and Janet Albretson in twenty twenty three. 00:03:55 Speaker 5: All you have is your name. That's what you come in with, is what you go out with your name, and so that's what I did. 00:04:04 Speaker 1: The Federal Court has found that on the balance of probabilities. Brittany Higgins was raped by Bruce Laman, a charge he denies. Justice Michael Lee also found there was no evidence of a conspiracy to cover up the rape, a finding backed in a separate court proceeding by West Australian Supreme Court Judge Paul Tottle, who said this of Higgins, we've used a voice actor to bring you his words. 00:04:30 Speaker 2: The defendant had persuaded herself there had been a cover up, even though that conclusion was not supported by the facts. 00:04:40 Speaker 1: Fiona Brown has always told a very different story. Brown says that when she realized something had happened late at night to Brittney Higgins, she personally walked Higgins to the police office within Parliament House and offered her counseling and assistance. In the Federal Court trial, Brown gave evidence that instead of covering up the rape, Linda Reynolds had ordered Brown to go to the police, but that Brown resisted, saying she wanted to support Higgins, who at that time was saying she didn't want cops involved. And now Fiona Brown has filed papers of her own in the Federal Court in which she tells a remarkable story that brings it all back around to Scott Morrison. Stephen Rice is The Australian's New South Wales editor, Ricey. We rarely get an insight into how government at the most senior levels operates. This is a pretty secret world. Fiona Brown paints a picture of the Prime Minister's office in panic when they first started hearing that stories were coming about Britney Higgins. How according to Fiona Brown in her statement of claim, did the staff in Morrison's office react to her and ask her to behave. 00:05:54 Speaker 2: Well, they reacted very badly as far as Fiona was concerned. They wanted to shut the whole thing down, and they appear to have felt that the best way to get rid of it was to freeze Fiona Brown out of all of it and just take it on themselves to try to kill the story, deal with the story as best they can. But part of their feeling seems to be, at least what they were telling her was it'll all go away, don't worry about it. These things don't last. Even without the benefit of hindsight. That was, you know, for some pretty experienced media hands. They clearly didn't have any idea how to deal with something of this magnitude. 00:06:40 Speaker 1: In almost the most surprising of ways, Ricey. This is coming back around to Scott Morrison. The allegation from Brittany Higgins, which Morrison has always denied, was that there was