Advertisement

Higgins, Sharaz poised to wed within weeks

Brittany Higgins is reportedly poised to marry fiance David Sharaz in June.

Brittany Higgins is reportedly poised to marry fiance David Sharaz in June. Photo: Instagram/David Sharaz

Brittany Higgins and David Sharaz will tie the knot within weeks, according to reports on Thursday.

Lawyers for Higgins told the Western Australian Supreme Court on Thursday that the former Liberal staffer and her fiance will wed in June, according to reports in the News Ltd papers.

No details about the exact date or the venue for the wedding were revealed.

It came as the legal teams for Higgins and Senator Linda Reynolds returned to the Perth court for the second time this week as the senator seeks information about a trust apparently set up to manage Higgins’ $2.4 million Commonwealth compensation payment.

Reynolds is suing Higgins and Sharaz in a pair of defamation cases resulting from the fallout from the former staffer’s claims she was raped in the senator’s Parliament House office.

Reynolds has also launched separate legal action in France to try to freeze Higgins’ Commonwealth payout.

The grounds for Higgins receiving the money included being raped in the workplace, suffering psychiatric injury, economic loss, bullying as well as the disputed inadequate support.

Mediation earlier this week failed to resolve Reynolds’ defamation claims.

The senator, who will leave Parliament at the next federal election, said she was disappointed there was not yet a resolution “for all of those who have been damaged and wounded by this saga for the last three years”.

“Unfortunately, it appears at this stage that we still will be heading to trial in July,” she said outside the Supreme Court in Perth on Tuesday.

Reynolds also said it was time for the parties to accept “the truth, as Justice Lee … found [in the Federal Court] in relation to this matter … and for us all to find a way to move on”.

“Far too many people have been damaged irreparably by this,” she said.

Arriving at court for the talks, Reynolds said it was time for her opponents “to admit they got it wrong”.

She also said Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus should accept Lee’s findings and that Higgins shouldn’t have been awarded her $2.4 million payout.

Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett said the comment was a reference to paragraphs 236-241 of Lee’s judgment.

“Where Justice Lee identified that the warranties given by Ms Higgins in the Deed of Settlement were false,” he said.

Lee’s judgment in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation case against Network Ten and journalist Lisa Wilkinson found that on the balance of probabilities he did rape Higgins.

He also found that allegations of a political cover-up were “objectively short on facts but long on speculation”.

Reynolds and Bennett declined earlier this week to say why mediation had not resolved the matter.

Asked if Higgins’ compensation payout was “protected” in her row with Reynolds, Bennett said he had started legal work to explore that.

Higgins and Sharaz are understood to have attended the mediation session from France via audio-visual link.

The parties in the WA case attended closed-door mediation in March but it was also failed.

In April, Sharaz tweeted he would no longer fight the case because he could not afford to pay the legal costs associated with a trial in July.

Reynolds is suing him over tweets he made and a Facebook comment in 2022.

One defamatory imputation claimed against Sharaz’s tweets was that Reynolds pressured Higgins not to proceed with a genuine complaint to police about being raped in her ministerial office.

Other claimed imputations were that Reynolds “is a hypocrite in her advocacy for women’s interests and empowerment”, interfered in Lehrmann’s trial and bullied Higgins.

Higgins is accused of posting defamatory material on her Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) accounts.

Lehrmann has always denied the sexual assault allegation.

His trial was aborted due to juror misconduct and Higgins’ mental health was cited as the reason for no retrial.

-with AAP

Advertisement
Advertisement
Stay informed, daily
A FREE subscription to The New Daily arrives every morning and evening.
The New Daily is a trusted source of national news and information and is provided free for all Australians. Read our editorial charter.
Copyright © 2024 The New Daily.
All rights reserved.