There was ‘no corruption issue’ found with the $2.4m taxpayer-funded compensation payout handed to Brittany Higgins after just one day of deliberation, the corruption watchdog has found.
The former Liberal staffer made a compensation claim for damages in March 2022 after alleging she was raped in parliament by her former colleague, Bruce Lehrmann.
After one day of mediation talks, she was handed a $2.4m settlement.
On Thursday morning, the National Anti-Corruption Commission (NACC) took the extraordinary step of addressing the ‘scrutiny and speculation’ surrounding the case.
‘There is no evidence that the settlement process, including the legal advice provided, who was present at the mediation, or the amount, was subject to any improper influence by any Commonwealth public official,’ a statment from the NACC said.
‘To the contrary, the evidence obtained reflected a process that was based on independent external legal advice, without any inappropriate intervention by any minister of either government.
‘There is therefore no corruption issue.’
The NACC said it had requested and analysed ‘thousands of documents’ and found that the commonwealth had received and acted upon independent legal advice.
‘There was no inappropriate intervention in the process by or on behalf of any minister,’ it added.
Lehrmann has always denied the allegations but was found to have raped Ms Higgins on the balance of probabilities by Justice Michael Lee in April last year – a decision Lehrmann is currently appealing.
In Ms Higgins’ draft statement of claim, first reported by The Australian newspaper, she had been ‘diagnosed as medically unfit for any form of employment, and has been given a very poor prognosis for future employment’.
The claim suggested she was therefore due over $2.5 million in economic loss for 40 years’ of missed earnings.
These claims were untested in court given Ms Higgins was awarded the $2.4 million by payout after one day of mediation talks.
More to come.
