Previously unseen draft of Brittany Higgins’ book describes debauchery as like the ‘Wolf of Wall Street’
A reopened defamation lawsuit has unearthed a previously unseen draft of a memoir by Brittany Higgins, which details hedonistic scenes in the nation’s capital and alleges one politician played with the buttons on her blazer while another threw a party resembling scenes from The Wolf of Wall Street.
The former ministerial adviser describes serving drinks to a group of Liberal MPs she labelled “The Big Swinging Dicks”. The excerpts also give a fresh window into Higgins’ relationship with her fiance, David Sharaz, who she says likened her to an “animal rescued from the RSPCA”.
The Federal Court has released an outline of Brittany Higgins’ unpublished manuscript.Credit: Steven Siewert
The book outline has emerged as part of a defamation case launched by Bruce Lehrmann against Network Ten and its high-profile presenter Lisa Wilkinson over an interview broadcast in 2021 in which Higgins accused a then-unnamed colleague of rape.
The case was reopened this week, less than 48 hours before a judgment was due to be handed down, when former Spotlight producer Taylor Auerbach gave explosive evidence that Lehrmann leaked private documents from Higgins to Seven as he negotiated an exclusive interview deal with the program.
The 38-page draft memoir was tendered by Ten into evidence during a hearing about whether Lehrmann leaked material to Seven that he had obtained as part of the criminal trial process.
Lehrmann was named in August 2021 as the man accused of Higgins’ rape when he was charged with one count of sexual assault. His ACT Supreme Court trial was aborted in October 2022 due to juror misconduct and he did not face a second trial owing to concerns about Higgins’ mental health.
In a letter in June last year, Ten’s lawyers wrote to Lehrmann’s lawyers and said the network was “extremely concerned” about the inclusion of Higgins’ draft manuscript, which had been released under subpoena, in Lehrmann’s first Spotlight interview that month.
Lehrmann has previously told the court he did not give documents to Seven and has always maintained his innocence of the rape allegations.
This masthead does not suggest any of the allegations made against individuals within Higgins’ book outline have been proven true and they have not been tested in court.
Entitled “#NotJustADaughter”, the draft manuscript describes Higgins’ initiation into a work-hard play-hard culture in Canberra after joining the office of then defence industry minister Steven Ciobo in late October 2018.
She writes that she was determined to fulfil a “silent promise” to make her mother proud for the sacrifices she had made after having Brittany at the age of 17.
“First meeting with the infamous group known as ‘The Big Swinging Dicks’ (Porter, Keenan, Tudge and Ciobo) in minister Ciobo’s office,” Higgins writes of her early days in Canberra.
“Serving them drinks then being invited to join them at Public Bar after work on Wednesday.”
Higgins alleges that Ciobo threw a Christmas party where he was lining up staff, including Higgins, and pouring whiskey directly into their mouths.
“The whole event had an almost Wolf of Wall Street hedonism about it,” she writes, referring to the wild parties that featured in the 2013 Hollywood movie on stock fraudster Jordan Belfort, though there is no reference to the politicians using drugs in Higgins’ manuscript.
Lisa Wilkinson (left), Bruce Lehrmann and Brittany Higgins. Credit: Steven Siewert, Rhett Wyman
Higgins adds that at a Christmas party for Coalition staffers she was found red-eyed by Ciobo because she had been crying about work pressures, and the minister started laughing, mistakenly assuming she had “taken the opportunity to get high”.
Of a later Coalition Christmas party she writes: “Standard debauchery just older, wiser and more tired.”
Higgins describes parliamentary friendship groups as an unofficial free pass to drink with lobbyists and says her office’s post-question time ritual was to break out a bottle of wine or champagne.
She recalls Liberal staffers working from 6.45am until 8pm, wearing polished suits and pencil skirts with their “heels on, hair curled”.
“Looking like they are all about ready to go on air and present on Fox News … the modern day, working, Stepford wife.”
In a chapter titled “You can’t go home again”, Higgins makes a reference to a “strange hand holding move” that occurred with a state MP and says she was warned by a former colleague about being careful of getting too deep into the “Canberra scene”.
A photo of the white dress Brittany Higgins wore on the night of the alleged assault, tendered in evidence in Bruce Lehrmann’s Federal Court defamation case.Credit: Federal Court of Australia
“Not to sleep around or get caught up in everything that happens there,” Higgins says.
Higgins also accuses former Liberal MP Andrew Laming of “playing with the buttons on my blazer”.
The document outlines innocence, horror and triumph as the major themes of the 90,000-word memoir.
Higgins gives a detailed account of the night before and morning after the alleged rape by Lehrmann, as well as flashbacks that occur after the incident. She recalls the moment she awoke with her dress hanging “loosely around my midsection like a belt” in the then office of Senator Linda Reynolds.
“I tried helplessly to regain the modesty I realised has been lost,” she writes.
“Tears began to stream down my face. I’m at work, I’m at parliament, why am I here. [sic]”
Higgins describes stumbling into the minister’s bathroom to throw up.
“I dropped back onto the floor, desperately clutching the toilet as I wretched up the bile in my stomach. I felt like a seagull covered in oil. Heavy and awash, at the whim of currents stronger than myself.
“I looked down at my white dress, stained and marked.”
Higgins references the day former prime minister Scott Morrison named Grace Tame as Australian of the Year as the pivotal moment she decided to come forward with her story.
The book also offers a window into Higgins’ relationship with Sharaz, as well as the journalists who broke the rape allegations, Wilkinson and News Corp reporter Samantha Maiden.
“David often told me I was like an animal rescued from the RSPCA, so braced for abuse that when someone tries to pet you – your instinct is to hid [sic] away,” Higgins writes. “He wasn’t wrong.”
Higgins writes the pair drew on her experience as a media adviser and Sharaz’s as a producer to war-game strategy when dealing with politicians and the press gallery.
“David had become my strength. I couldn’t imagine facing this onslaught without his implicit support and love,” she says.
“He had lost so much during all of this; his job, his home, his friends, his anonymity. It was a debt that I would never be able to repay.”
Higgins claims there were fights between Network Ten’s program The Project and Maiden about when to break the story for maximum impact.
Lisa Wilkinson and Brittany Higgins.
She describes staying with Wilkinson and her husband, Peter FitzSimons, a columnist for this masthead, as like residing with her “temporary adopted parents”.
Higgins details her angst as she waited for senior female Liberal Party figures to act as her “political saviour” and take the reins of the movement she had begun.
“It was still just me, facing what felt like an immovable force,” she writes, adding that she had been forced to decide between her dream career and a chance at justice.
“Honestly, I feel like a B-Grade Grace Tame. She exists outside and beyond the political bubble. Court case closed, awarded and revered.
“Here I am in the mud with the pigs – fighting for control of the daily news cycle.”
Ten alleges that Auerbach’s evidence, if accepted, forms the basis of a submission that Lehrmann lied to the court when he said last year that he did not give documents to Seven.
Higgins’ documents, including text messages, were handed over to the Australian Federal Police under a search warrant as it investigated her claim that she was sexually assaulted by Lehrmann in Parliament House in March 2019. The pair were political advisers at the time.
Auerbach has claimed Lehrmann gave him 2300 pages of Higgins’ text messages with an ex-boyfriend in December 2022, and Ten has invited Justice Michael Lee to infer that Lehrmann gave Seven the entire prosecution e-brief in his criminal trial.
If Lehrmann did leak material that he acquired as part of the criminal trial process, Ten alleges his conduct amounted to a contempt because he breached an implied obligation not to use the material for a purpose unrelated to the trial.
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