Katy Gallagher has support of peers over misleading parliament accusation regarding Brittany Higgins

Katy Gallagher reportedly has the backing of the Prime Minister’s office despite accusations she misled parliament over her knowledge of Brittany Higgins’ rape allegation. 

The Finance Minister addressed reporters outside an event in Perth on Saturday afternoon to say she’d been ‘clear’ and ‘honest’ at all times. 

Then-defence minister Linda Reynolds had accused Labor senators of being secretly briefed on the allegations made by Ms Higgins before they were aired publicly in February 2021.

Ms Gallagher responded at the time ‘no-one had any knowledge’. 

Recently leaked texts suggest Ms Higgins’ boyfriend David Sharaz was in contact with Ms Gallagher before the allegations of rape were made public.

Ms Gallagher has ‘categorically’ denied she misled parliament following the release of the texts by The Australian this week.

Sources close to Anthony Albanese’s office were reportedly making it clear they still supported Ms Gallagher as she came under fire, the Daily Telegraph reported. 

Daily Mail Australia contacted Mr Albanese’s office for comment.  

Ms Gallagher was previously quizzed in Senate Estimates in June 2021 about the extent of her knowledge on the allegation before the story broke.

During the June 2021 Senate Estimates hearing, then-Defence Minister Linda Reynolds accused Labor senators of being secretly briefed on the rape allegation.

‘I was told by one of your senators two weeks before about what you were intending to do with the story in my office. Two weeks before,’ She said.

In response to the claim, Senator Gallagher said: ‘No-one had any knowledge’.

Addressing the texts from Mr Sharaz, Ms Gallagher said she had been made aware of ‘some allegations’ in the days leading up to Ms Higgins’ explosive interview in February 2021.

‘I’ve been clear, I’ve been honest and at all times I’ve been guided by the bravery and courage of a young woman who chose to speak up about her workplace and from that we have had massive changes to that workplace,’ she said on Saturday.

‘(I was told) There was going to be some public reporting that a young woman making serious allegations about events that occurred in a minister’s office … were going to become public.

‘I categorically rejected, and you see that in the footage of the committee, I categorically rejected the assertion she was putting, which was that we had chosen to weaponise that information weeks ahead of being told about this.’

Questioned by reporters whether she misled parliament in 2021, Ms Gallagher simply said: ‘No’.

‘The answer to the question about the allegation of misleading is no, I did not mislead the parliament,’ she said.

‘I was responding to an assertion that was being made by the Minister, Reynolds, at the time that we had known about this for weeks and had made a decision to weaponise it.

‘That is not true, it was never true … I explained that to Senator Reynolds that night and she accepted that explanation, and that was some two years ago.

‘I did nothing with that information and I know I was clear about that at the time.

‘I was clear about that two years ago so there’s absolutely no issue here at all.’

Her comments come after Ms Reynolds claimed Ms Gallagher and now-Foreign Minister Penny Wong told her they knew about the allegations before they were made public.

‘Penny did know about it ­before it went public – she said so at the meeting,’ Senator Reynolds told The Australian on Friday.

‘Katy did confirm with me she knew both David and Brittany, and he had told her what was going to happen before it happened.’

Earlier on Saturday, at the same event, Senator Wong addressed reporters to confirm she did have prior knowledge of the allegations, despite claiming during the same 2021 Estimates hearing she ‘had no knowledge’ until the night the story broke.

‘(I knew) serious allegations were made by a Liberal staffer about an alleged rape which occurred metres from Prime Minister Morrison’s office,’ she said.

‘I want to make clear I did not know the full details of the allegations before the story became public.’

Ms Wong took aim at the former Coalition government, saying there were ministers at the time ‘who did know a lot of detail’.

‘They have still failed to account for what they did with that information,’ she said,

‘To this day, the Australian people do not know what Mr Morrison’s office knew and when they knew because the report he commissioned by his former chief of staff Mr (Phil) Gaetjens, has never been made public.

‘I do want to make this clear, President (Scott) Ryan, the former President of the senate, made a statement to the senate some time ago in which he indicated that a number of senators, including me, were aware of some details as early as 2020 when an anonymous complaint or anonymous complaints were made.’

But Ms Gallagher’s denials are unlikely to quieten her critics, with Deputy Liberal Leader Sussan Ley saying the statements raised more questions than they answered.

‘We now know, years on from these developments, that senior Labor figures were tipped off about this serious allegation,’ Ms Ley said.

‘Anthony Albanese, Penny Wong, Katy Gallagher and Tanya Plibersek all have serious questions to answer about what they knew, when they knew it and what they did about it.’ 

Senator Gallagher has been under scrutiny since explosive text messages between Mr Sharaz and Ms Higgins, sent four days before the rape allegations were made public, were published in The Australian earlier this week.

‘Katy is going to come to me with some questions you need to prepare for … She’s really invested now ha ha,’ Mr Sharaz wrote in one text on February 11, 2021.

In another he referred to Senator Gallagher as an ‘old friend’ texting that: ‘We opened a chair together. So you can trust her.’

The messages are from the investigation into Bruce Lehrmann, who Ms Higgins alleged sexually assaulted her in Linda Reynolds former office in Parliament House in 2019, a claim Mr Lerhmann has always denied.

They were widely distributed between Australian Federal Police, the ACT office of the Director of Public Prosecutions and the defence legal team before being leaked to The Australian.

Mr Sharaz was so close with Minister Gallagher that she was invited to his wedding.

She told Radio National on Wednesday that she ‘knew him’ from when he was a journalist in Canberra, but said she had ‘nothing more to add’.

However, Daily Mail Australia earlier this week revealed Mr Sharaz’s relationship with Senator Gallagher extended to the point where she was invited to attend his wedding to his ex-wife Alexandra Craig in 2018.

She did not attend the wedding, but the invitation appeared to stem from a friendship that sparked nine years’ ago – when Mr Sharaz worked for WIN News Canberra in 2014.

Mr Sharaz interviewed Senator Gallagher on television in 2014 and 2015, long before she joined federal parliament – asking her a range of questions about her future in politics.

One interview was broadcast in March 2015, the day before the now-Finance Minister was sworn into the Senate.

‘Are you nervous at all?’ he asked, referring to her new job in federal politics.

‘Yeah, very nervous,’ she replied.

‘Maybe when you look at politicians you think they’re these egos that never get nervous, or worry about stuffing up or doing the wrong thing, but for me it’s like every other job I’ve ever had.’

Opposition leader Peter Dutton told 2GB this week that Senator Gallagher and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese need to be honest about what Labor knew and when and that the Integrity Commission would be interested. 

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Friday told Sunrise that he was ‘absolutely’ confident Senator Gallagher did not lie to Parliament.

‘What is being suggested here by Peter Dutton,’ Mr Albanese said.

‘You had allegations by a Liberal staffer that another Liberal staffer had a sexual assault in a Liberal minister’s office and, somehow, Katy Gallagher has some responsibility for what was going on here.

‘This is bizarre.’