Katy Gallagher cracks: The Treasury Secretary’s emotional show on Brittany Higgins, David Sharaz

Katy Gallagher finally appears to be cracking up under the onslaught of liberal criticism and questions about Brittany Higgins’ sexual assault allegations.

The Secretary of the Treasury has been the target of repeated questions in the Senate this week about her knowledge of Ms. Higgins’ allegations before speaking out publicly.

She has remained stoic and firm in her answers, often referencing a statement she made to the Senate on Tuesday ahead of the week’s first Question Time.

But on Thursday, her voice finally quivered toward the end of the session in response to a question from Nationals Senator Bridget McKenzie.

“I’m very disappointed this week,” she said, her lower lip trembling.

Mrs. Gallagher did her best to keep her composure and went on to say, “The work we’ve been doing [the Kate Jenkins report] Respect@Work, ask women to come forward if something happens to them and then treat women as they are being treated now.’

Ms. Gallagher said she was under the impression that the bombardment of questions — especially today — came from Senator Linda Reynolds.

Brittany Higgins alleged she was sexually assaulted in Ms Reynolds’ office by Bruce Lehrmann after a night out in 2019 while they were both staffers.

He has always strongly denied the allegations, and they were never proven in court after a mistrial.

Ms. Higgins also accused Ms. Reynolds of mishandling her complaints, and Ms. Reynolds called her junior staffer a “lying cow,” resulting in a payout.

Mrs. Gallagher said, “I’m sorry Senator Reynolds is clearly upset about what happened to her.

“I’m sorry, and I told her. But I’m also very sorry for Brittany Higgins, I’m sorry that documents about her personal life were leaked, I’m sorry that a confidential draft claim for damages made it to the front pages of a national newspaper.

“The insinuation…today is that we harmed Senator Reynolds, that’s what she feels.

“When that was brought to our attention, we picked it up.”

Mrs. Gallagher seemed to say more, but the time available to answer the question passed before she had a chance.

For a third consecutive day, Ms Gallagher’s involvement in the complaint dominated questions from the Liberal Party.

On Wednesday, Ms Gallagher admitted she had forgotten she had received an invitation to the first wedding from Higgins’ partner David Sharaz, as she was inundated with invitations to random events at that point in her career.

She also criticized leaked text messages in which Mr Sharaz described her as a ‘boyfriend’ of then-girlfriend, now-fiancée Ms Higgins.

“May I start by saying I’m not responsible for how people describe their relationship with me,” the beleaguered minister said during Senate question time.

Daily Mail Australia revealed last month that Ms Gallagher was invited to Mr Sharaz’s wedding to ex-wife Alexandra Craig in 2018. [she] heard it report’.

“I had to ask the people I worked with at the time, I think I was prime minister. I got a lot of invitations to a lot of things, some I could visit and some I couldn’t.

“The one I didn’t go to. It was refused.’

She has maintained that it would be inappropriate and a breach of Ms Higgins’ trust to give details beyond what she has already said on the matter.

Ms Gallagher admitted that it was Mr Sharaz who first discussed Ms Higgins’s allegations with her in the week before the story went public through a television interview with Lisa Wilkinson and The Project, and an online interview with news.com.au.

But she told the Senate on Wednesday that her relationship with Mr Sharaz was not unusual – and likely similar to relationships he had with many other politicians.

“I had a professional relationship with Mr. Sharaz, as do many here, as he worked here for a while,” she said.

“It’s a professional relationship with a journalist I knew in the ACT and I ran into him again when I rose to the Senate. I expect that relationship to exist for a number of senators.’

Ms Gallagher has repeatedly urged the opposition to consider the broader ramifications of their questions, revealing that she had been ‘flooded’ with calls from women’s organizations and women themselves about the impact of the continued reporting.

“If you can live with that on your conscience . . . I can’t live with mine,” she said.

The Liberal Party has insisted it is not trying to ‘guess’the judicial process that has already taken place’ or ‘extract innocence or guilt from an involved party’.

And the opposition is now in the throes of its own crisis, after Lidia Thorpe accused Senator David Van of sexual harassment.

Peter Dutton confirmed on Thursday that Senator Van would no longer sit in the Liberal banquet hall after “further allegations” came to light following Ms Thorpe’s Senate speech on Wednesday.