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 658 On 28 March, Ms Higgins had her discussion with Mr Payne (when she had made the contemporaneous representation it "would have been like f***ing a log" (T1422.39–43)). That afternoon, she also sent Mr Dillaway a text at 2:58pm referring to the fact that "Chris [Payne] just said apparently the AFP came into the suite during the night or morning sometime. And they just left me there" (Ex R99 (at 723)). Mr Payne's memory of this aspect of his conversation was unclear (T1423.23) but, of course, we know from the contemporaneous materials that this was an error, and it was security, not the AFP, that was involved in coming into the Ministerial Suite, as Ms Higgins explained in her evidence-in-chief (T659.27).

659 An assault had not been formally reported to the AFP by this time. This is not to say the evidence is clear about when a security incident had been communicated by DPS or others to the AFP. It is notable that a few months later Commissioner Andrew Colvin (Ex R94) complained about the AFP not being informed about the incident and asserted that "there are significant discrepancies between the response to this incident and the existing agreements that our agencies share" and the "unacceptable" length of time it took DPS to share the Parliamentary Security Service incident report with the AFP.

660 In any event, what we do know is that on the following day, the contemporaneous material (Annexure B) records Ms Brown called Ms Higgins on 29 March and offered to report the incident to police. This, of course, was at the time she was being pressured to report the incident, through Mr Reginald Chamberlain, because the Special Minister of State, Mr Hawke and Senator Reynolds wanted to protect their interests (T2126.14–32). Ms Higgins told Ms Brown "no", and said she wanted to see her father and, as I have already noted, Ms Brown appropriately respected her wishes.

661 Pausing here, Mr Chamberlain (Chief of Staff to Mr Hawke), gave evidence he had first heard from the Department of Finance about the incident in "about late March or early April"; his knowledge was that two staffers had entered Parliament House late at night, which he thought odd (Chamberlain (at [6]–[7])). He obviously knew something happened before he was putting pressure on Ms Brown, so it must have been late March.

662 It was also on 1 April that Ms Higgins first went to the AFP after the meeting between Ms Higgins, the Minister and Ms Brown as recorded in Annexure B. But despite this, the AFP must have become aware of the incident, other than through Ms Brown, prior to the meeting Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment) [2024] FCA 369