Higgins payout a test for corruption watchdog
For all the attention Brittany Higgins has copped over her $2.445m payment, she did not write the cheque herself. So far questions have been asked only of the person who received the money, not the person who authorised it.
Meanwhile, the National AntiCorruption Commission kicked off with 180 staff and $33.2m in July, and has more than $300m and another 100 staff on the way.
It was billed as “a national anticorruption commission with teeth”, but we are about to find out whether it has ferocious incisors or dentures in a glass beside the bed.
Its purview is to investigate the conduct of any person who adversely affects a public official’s honest or impartial exercise of powers or performance of official duties; conduct of a public official that involves a breach of public trust; conduct of a public official that involves abuse of office; and conduct of a public official involving the misuse of documents or information they have gained in their capacity as a public official.
It’s as though this sordid saga was made to order for the NACC.
What matters in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case is not three competing egos but the debunking of myths, surfacing only because of the staffers’ separate addictions to proving their victimhood.
Higgins received $1.48m for lost earning capacity, being unable to work again for 40 years.
While having this apparent impairment, she has been able to address rallies, deliver speeches outside the courtroom, to the National Press Club televised on ABC, keep a high-profile social media presence, and be awarded a $300,000 book deal, an ANU fellowship and
UN trips to Geneva.
Thanks to the Federal Court this week, we know the CCTV was never denied to police as part of some cover-up conspiracy that was, Justice Lee said, a “complete red herring”.
The office was cleaned not because of a rape allegation that did not eventuate until days later, but because a naked staffer was sleeping on the minister’s couch.
The Prime Minister’s Office was not ruthlessly vilifying Higgins.
Phone calls played to the court – recorded by Higgins to back up her case of sinister play – instead genuinely showed her minister boss Michaelia Cash and chief of staff trying to help.
They were supporting her if she went to police.
She wasn’t unfairly dismissed, or sacked – she quit.
The money wasn’t for lack of process, it wasn’t for alleged rape, but $400,000 for her hurt, distress and humiliation.
Most people, if they are humiliated and shunned, avoid the public spotlight. She made herself the centre of it, from The Project all the way to business class in matching white outfits with her mother and fiance.
It was $1.48m to cover lost earning capacity, but she got a book deal immediately.
Surely those responsible for assessing the claim would ask what income was coming her way?
Those funds, which presumably paid for her fiance’s Burberry coats, business class tickets to Europe, holidays to the Maldives and a
French country home raise questions about public trust in our institutions.
Lehrmann might have shown himself to be a deluded liar in these proceedings, but the evidence around him has exposed the question: was this a payment by the current government for services rendered to impugn the former?
Was the government party to weaponising untested allegations?
Higgins’ early draft of her book presents situations that no one has ever corroborated, and even she has stepped away from.
According to the draft, the wound on her leg was seeping blood.
Photographs of the bruise, on appearances more synonymous with falling up the stairs, did not appear at any stage to be an open wound.
Is this the information AttorneyGeneral Mark Dreyfus and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher used as the basis for her claim? What drove them to make such a massive payout?
Now, they are aware of contradictory information we have
not heard one utterance from them that they were misled or misinformed, which may suggest the facts had little to do with the number on the cheque.
If the NACC properly investigates the case, it will be forced to investigate the same minister who birthed it into life, who also signed off on the unprecedented $2.445m payment after a few hours of mediation.
Evidence put to Justice Lee opens so many questions.
Which minister directed that this mediation occur without an investigation or corroboration by anyone else?
And importantly, why?
What will be put in place to ensure that people making claims in the future of being unable to work again will not be given incentive to lie?
This is not magic money; it’s taxpayers’ money.
The NACC has no time to dither.