Higgins told the court that once their boss, former Defense Industries Secretary Linda Reynolds, was informed of the alleged attack, Brown’s tone changed.
Higgins said she saw former Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s chief of staff John Konkel come and go from Reynolds’ office during the week.
She felt she had to choose between reporting the assault to the police and keeping her job, especially as the government would soon enter caretaker mode ahead of the 2019 elections.
She said Higgins was also pressured by her boss to travel with Reynolds to Perth for the duration of the campaign.
I wasn’t sure how to proceed because of all the partisan politics [with a complaint] Or if I could go ahead with it,” Higgins told Dramgold in her testimony.
She said the white dress was “such a strange anchor to me.”
“Once it turns out that I can’t move forward [with a police complaint] “And I keep my work,” she continued, “I symbolically washed the dress and wore it again, and I haven’t worn it since.”
At an afternoon hearing when Higgins was questioned by Lerman’s attorney Stephen Wybro, the dress reappeared.
He referred to Higgins’ previous description of the dress to police as “a white cocktail dress that comes just below the knee…it has spaghetti straps and that square neckline.”
Whybrow then showed Higgins a photo of her on May 15, 2019, at a liberal dinner party in Perth.
She was wearing a white dress.
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After Higgins decided not to pursue the police complaint at the time, she traveled to Perth with Reynolds – the court heard she was desperate to hold on to her dream of working as a media consultant in a liberal government.
She took the white dress to Perth, and wore it to the May 15 dinner, which took place a few days before the 2019 election, and less than two months after the alleged assault.
“You’re wearing the same dress, right?” asked Whybrow Higgins, referring to the May dinner.
“I said before lunch that six months this dress was kept in a bag under your bed.”
Higgins replied, “Obviously, the amount of time I alluded to from under my bed to wearing it was longer than I thought.”
She continued, “I stayed under my bed for a while.”
“I was wrong to say it was six months. It was obviously shorter than that… I was wrong.”
Wibro stayed on the case.
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He said, “Let me suggest to you, that you were not mistaken, you did not give true and correct evidence when you said it.”
“I made a mistake,” Higgins replied.
“I wasn’t trying to do it, I was just wrong.”
Under this line of questioning, Higgins said she wore the dress in Perth as a way to “reclaim my agency.”
“It might sound silly to you, but it was kind of empowering,” she said.
The white dress was eventually presented to the Australian Federal Police in a bag, and now forms part of the body of evidence for this trial, which is set to run for another five weeks.
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Originally published at Melbourne News Vine
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