Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz mocked Senator Linda Reynolds after she suffered a breakdown in Parliament, a court has heard.

Higgins is fighting a defamation lawsuit launched by Reynolds, her former boss, over social media posts from 2023 that the ex-defence minister claims damaged her reputation.

The trial has heard Reynolds had an emotional and physical breakdown after intense political attacks related to Higgins’ alleged rape in Parliament House, and claims she had mishandled it.

Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett outlined a 2021 message exchange between Higgins and Sharaz in which the couple discussed the Senator’s political demise after she took three weeks’ leave.

“‘So Linda has delayed her return to work hahaha, three weeks’,” said one of the messages Bennett read in the Western Australian Supreme Court on Wednesday.

“That means after estimates, if so you might get your retraction.”

Another said: “Wow, she’s done. You don’t take three weeks and come back”.

“They mock the fact that the attack initiated on my client has caused her to go on sick leave,” Bennett said during his closing submissions, as he alleged Higgins and Sharaz had executed a plan to harm Reynolds.

The Senator and her partner Robert Reid have said she was admitted to hospital over a cardiac disorder amid warnings she could die.

Bennett also told Justice Paul Tottle of an email exchange between Higgins and News Corp journalist Samantha Maiden, in which the former staffer is asked if Reynolds should resign.

Higgins responds: “Fully off the record, I don’t think so.”

Bennett said the “off-the-record” request was evidence that Higgins didn’t want the admission to detract from her statements against her former boss days earlier when she went public with her rape allegation.

“It shows she didn’t have a genuine, honest belief in the allegations she was making,” he said.

“I think she was just following instructions.”

Bennett said that in another of Sharaz’s messages to Higgins, he said: “Suck s–t Linda, you awful human.”

Referring to then-prime minister Scott Morrison, Higgins said: “He’s about to be F’d up … We’ve got him.”

Bennett said that in another message, Higgins said: “Honestly, I feel like a B-grade Grace Tame … Here I am in the mud with the pigs fighting for control of the daily news cycle, throwing mud.”

“‘A Whatsapp here, a voicemail there, a drop to [Maiden]’,” he said reading the message.

“‘We’ve become quite a twosome when it came to game planning, my experience as a media adviser, David’s experience as a producer, together we understood how the gallery media sphere operated’.”

Peta Credlin helped Higgins with a statement after the rape became public.

Peta Credlin emerges in surprise role

Wednesday’s allegations followed Bennett telling the court on Tuesday that a statement apparently from Higgins – and read out by her lawyer Rachael Young during her closing submissions – was not written by her.

“It wasn’t Ms Higgins’ voice at all,” he said of the statement from February 19, 2021.

“The draft … was prepared by Sharaz and it was edited by Peta Credlin.”

Bennett read out messages between Sharaz and the Sky News political commentator, in which he told Credlin: “Thank you again for your help. Please see below the initial draft, feel free to completely re-work wherever you see fit”.

Credlin confirmed the claim on her evening show on Tuesday. While insisting she had never actually met Higgins, she said “contacts of Higgins” got in touch in the days after the stories were published, asking if she would take a call from Higgins as a “former Liberal chief of staff and a woman”.

Credlin – a former chief of staff to prime minister Tony Abbott – said she was also involved in crafting initial terms of reference for the Setting the Standard report, later conducted by former sex discrimination commissioner Kate Jenkins.

Bennett told the court that Credlin provided suggestions to rework paragraphs in Higgins’ statement, asking Sharaz to call her so she could talk him through the changes. He also said Sharaz sent the edited document to journalist Lisa Wilkinson.

“This idea that statements made by Ms Higgins after the date of The Project interview and the Maiden article corroborate her motive in making those statements … needs to be treated with caution because what appears to be Ms Higgins’ voice was the voice of people jumping on a bandwagon,” Bennett said.

Higgins alleged she was raped by fellow staffer Bruce Lehrmann in Reynolds’ ministerial suite in March 2019.

Lehrmann has always denied the rape allegation and his criminal trial was derailed by juror misconduct.

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-with AAP