The staffer accused of raping Brittany Higgins has not been given a sponsored pass allowing access to Parliament House since his termination, the government says.
The alleged perpetrator went on to take up a lobbyist role with a Sydney-based public relations firm, where he stayed until early 2020, before moving on to a job with a major corporation later that year.
Higgins, meanwhile, is unemployed, and the Guardian revealed on Tuesday that her partner, David Sharaz, has been forced to leave his role managing federal government clients for a media analytics firm, claiming it was no longer tenable.
Greens senator Larissa Waters has repeatedly asked the government whether the alleged perpetrator was sponsored for a new pass to enter Parliament House in association with his post-politics jobs.
On Tuesday, the prime minister, Scott Morrison, confirmed the alleged attacker had not been given a new pass to enter parliament. His old pass was cancelled on 27 March 2019, one day after his employment was terminated.
But senator Simon Birmingham said the government could not guarantee he had not been signed in since then on a one-off visitor’s pass to temporarily visit the building. One-off sign-ins are recorded in handwriting on a paper system, and cannot be easily searched, Birmingham told the Senate on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the defence minister, Linda Reynolds, came unstuck while answering questions in the Senate about her handling of the alleged crime in March 2019.
Reynolds was questioned about her meetings with police and on two separate occasions told the upper house she had met police twice.
The first meeting with police, she said, was on 1 April, with Higgins and Reynolds’ then chief of staff, Fiona Brown. That does not accord with her previous statements. It also conflicts with her assertion that she only found out about the alleged rape on 1 April during the meeting she now says police were at.
The second meeting, Reynolds said, was with police on 4 April. She has previously said she met police alone on that occasion but now says her chief of staff joined them late.
Labor’s Senate leader, Penny Wong, challenged the answer and put it to Reynolds that she was wrong about the first meeting, given Higgins has said she had never been in a meeting with both police and Reynolds.
Reynolds told the Senate she would need to double-check her answer.
“I will check what I said yesterday and what I said today against my recollections and I will come back at the first opportunity to clarify,” she said.
The Liberal party has also been forced to remove public comments from its Facebook page that attacked Higgins and questioned her motives for coming forward.
The comments were described as “offensive” and were “immediately deleted”, a spokesperson told news.com.au. “We will delete any similar comments,” they said. “Those comments were clearly wrong and we condemn them.”
Morrison on Tuesday stood by previous statements that his office was not made aware of the alleged sexual assault until 12 February and that he did not become aware until 15 February. That is despite Brown moving to work in his office after the 2019 election.
“I can confirm to the house that my office became aware of the matter regarding the sexual assault on 12 February 2021,” Morrison said on Tuesday.
“I can confirm that I did not become aware of the allegation of a sexual assault until 15 February 2021. I can tell you, at the time of these incidents, several years ago, the issue of sexual assault was not raised with me.”
Higgins says Morrison’s private secretary, Yaron Finklestein, called her in 2020 when an ABC Four Corners documentary aired to check up on her.
The Guardian has also reported that another Morrison staffer, who worked in Alex Hawke’s office at the time of the alleged rape, had knowledge of the alleged attacker’s employment being terminated.
