Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has hit out at the "politicking", "mudslinging" and the "hypocrisy" surrounding the Brittany Higgins allegations, saying it sends the wrong message to women outside and inside Parliament House.
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The Coalition has been targeting Labor frontbencher Katy Gallagher over claims she has misled Parliament about her knowledge in opposition of 2019 rape allegations brought forward by the former Liberal staffer in February 2021. The accused man, Bruce Lehrmann, has always denied the allegations and no findings were made against him after an ACT Supreme Court trial was aborted.
Leaked text messages published by The Australian newspaper purport to show Ms Higgins' partner David Sharaz had been in contact with Senator Gallagher before Ms Higgins appeared on The Project to reveal the rape allegations. It also paints the Finance Minister and ACT senator as "invested" in the allegations.
Senator Gallagher has denied she misled Parliament, but said over the weekend that Mr Sharaz had given her some details of the rape allegation but she insisted she did not use the allegations for political purposes.
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Senator Hanson-Young said the political treatment of the matter was disgusting.
"People should be ashamed of themselves," she told reporters in Canberra.
"I'm extremely concerned about the message this sends to women and not just women outside this building but women inside this building.
"And whether you are a political staffer, whether you are a cleaner, whether you work at Aussie's Cafe, whether you are a journalist, this is not OK. And people trying to score political points out of this should be ashamed of themselves."
The manager of Australian Greens Business in the Senate said her party had also decided not to facilitate any political game-playing or points scoring over the matter, which refers to possible Senate motions or other parliamentary actions.
It is expected the Coalition will target Senator Gallagher in Senate question time over when she first heard about the allegations and what she did with them.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has raised the possibility of the multi-million dollar commonwealth payout to Ms Higgins being referred to the new National Anti-Corruption Commission.
Ms Higgins accused her former colleague of assaulting her in the office of former minister Linda Reynolds in March 2019.
Mr Lehrmann continues to claim his innocence over the matter.
The leaked messages between Ms Higgins and her partner David Sharaz, not denied by the couple, appears to have come from her phone which had been handed over to police as part of the police investigation.
"I think there's some serious questions that need to be asked about how the private information of Brittany Higgins's text messages to her partner are even being exposed publicly," Senator Hanson-Young said.
"I understand that Channel 10 have referred the matter to the AFP today. Well, there's some serious questions as to why it wasn't already being investigated.
"And I'm also of course very concerned about, and as we all should be, about the welfare and the impact that all of this is having on Ms Higgins herself and her family. And it just beggars belief that we're back in this building after 12 months of discussion on trying to raise the standards in this place to have this back, being debated in this manner."