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 the details. Mr Stephen Frost, part of MinWing Support, saw Ms Brown and during this conversation, she discovered the Ministerial private office had also been cleaned on the previous Saturday, after Ms Higgins had left it. Ms Brown was initially concerned by hearing this, but Mr Frost advised her that it was "standard procedure for an office to be cleaned following after-hours access", and further explained there had been incidences over many years where offices had been left in a mess. There is no reason to doubt the evidence of what Mr Frost said to Ms Brown, which is supported by the contemporaneous record.

655 Secondly, not recorded in Ms Brown's notes, were meetings with Mr Payne which took place before Mr Lehrmann had left the office. I am satisfied these were inconsequential interactions whereby Ms Brown requested that Mr Payne initiate the necessary administrative action to finalise Mr Lehrmann's employment, but there evidently was also discussion of the incident in the context of Ms Brown enquiring of the Defence Liaison Officer whether the security incident, being the unauthorised access, would need to be reported to Defence (which Mr Payne responded in the negative) (T1421.24–31). It appears there may have been some discussion about securing CCTV footage of the security incident, which would no doubt have been sensible given the serious security breach, but I am not satisfied the recollections of either participant is good enough, in the absence of any contemporaneous record, to ascertain specifics.

I.3The Role of the AFP and the 2019 Decision of Ms Higgins not to Proceed

656 Despite the representation made by Ms Higgins in the Commonwealth Deed that four days after the incident, on 27 March, members of the AFP Parliament House unit informed Ms Higgins that "they [the identity of the "they" is left undisclosed] had been told to investigate a sexual assault" (PL cl 3.13), this is not the case, and the involvement of the AFP came about differently.

657 On 27 March, Mr Dillaway came up from Melbourne to visit Ms Higgins and was giving her support – around this time Ms Higgins was saying her "main concern" was that she did not want anyone to know what had happened and she also "had concerns about becoming known as the girl who was raped in Parliament, and she was worried about how it could affect her job and her career" (T1223.33–35; T1224.16–26). Mr Dillaway explained to her that she had nothing to worry about because she was the victim and should have nothing to fear in terms of her job (T1224.42–45). Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment) [2024] FCA 369