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Nikita Irvine told the Federal Court she had dinner with Brittany Higgins the day after the alleged rape, and Ms Higgins said: ‘I have been in contact with Bruce’.

Major Irvine was at the Dock hotel with Mr Lehrmann, Ms Higgins and other colleagues on 22 March 2019.

She did not go to the nightclub which was about 80mph after the pub, but received a text the next day from another colleague, Lauren Gain, saying: ‘Brittany and Bruce have been in touch’.

That evening she told the court she had dinner with Ms Higgins, saying: ‘I’ve been in contact with Bruce’.

Major Irvine said she did not respond to Ms Higgins’ revelation.

When Network Ten’s lawyer asked Major Irvine if she had spoken to Mr Lehrmann in the pub that evening, she said: ‘I had a bad feeling about Bruce.’

When asked why she didn’t like him, she said, “It’s just women’s intuition, Dr. Collins, I can’t explain it.”

She also told the court that Ms Higgins told her the following week that Mr Lehrmann had allegedly assaulted her.

“She said, ‘Bruce had some whiskey he wanted to show me when we got back to Parliament House, I fell asleep on the sofa and I woke up and he was on top of me,'” Major Irvine said.

She asked Ms Higgins if it was a seizure, and Ms Higgins said ‘absolutely’.

However, Major Irvine also said she was unsure whether Ms Higgins identified the situation as a rape.

Major Irvine recalled that Ms Higgins told her in early April 2019 that she had decided not to make a formal complaint because police had told her it would be too difficult to secure a conviction.