Former senator Linda Reynolds will attempt to resolve her legal dispute with the Commonwealth through mediation, seeking a settlement over how the government handled the financial payout to her former staffer Brittany Higgins.
Reynolds is suing the government and its legal representatives over the $2.4 million compensation awarded to Higgins, who alleged she was raped inside Parliament House in 2019. At the time, Higgins was working in Reynolds’s ministerial office.
A civil court later found, on the balance of probabilities, that Higgins had been raped by colleague Bruce Lehrmann, who has consistently denied the allegation.
Reynolds argues the Commonwealth failed to act in her best interests when it assumed control of her defence in response to Higgins’s claims that she did not feel adequately supported by her former boss after the incident. She maintains that the government’s actions during the settlement process were unfair and damaging to her reputation.
The move to mediation marks the latest step in a long‑running and highly public legal saga that continues to reverberate through Australia’s political and legal landscape.
+ There are no comments
Add yours