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 thought it would be disempowering of the person whose interests are most acutely affected; that is, the person who may have something to report?---Yes.

It's really for her to make a decision about whether she wants to start a process about going to the police and that was the reason you were pushing back?---Yes.

271 We are not all the same. I have no doubt that if apprised of the information identified above, many in her place would have concluded that sex had taken place with a question mark hovering over consent. For all I know, the Senator (who was not called), may have done so by this time and I suspect that is the conclusion I would have drawn. But I accept Ms Brown's evidence of her circumspection was given genuinely, and this reflected what the contemporaneous record demonstrates was her guarded personality and careful, even pedantic, approach.

272 She was not someone to speculate or jump to conclusions and I reject any suggestion Ms Higgins expressly said to Ms Brown at either their first or second meeting that she had been raped or sexually assaulted. As Ms Higgins later said to Ms Maiden (Ex 50 (at 12)):

I don't know, I think for like the longest time I was really weird about actually saying it was rape, I couldn't ... I don't know why but I was really delicate around that whole subject. So maybe I didn't say to her directly that he was raping me... he was on top of me and I just ... And from our exchange, I think she understood the inference of what was being made.

273 She did not draw a definitive conclusion in the light of the ambiguous words used by Ms Higgins – she adopted the more cautious view that sex and something untoward may have happened.

274 But what does not reflect caution was standing up to her Minister and the Chief of Staff of another Minister when Ms Brown thought they were intent on protecting their own interests at the expense of allowing a young woman to make her own decision as to whether she would involve the police – even at some risk to her professional career. This showed integrity in resisting pressure she subjectively considered inappropriate and evinced a concern for the autonomy and welfare of Ms Higgins. In these circumstances, to be later vilified as an unfeeling apparatchik willing to throw up roadblocks in covering up criminal conduct at the behest of one's political overlords must be worse than galling.

275 The attempts in cross-examination to impeach the integrity of Ms Brown's contemporaneous note taking went nowhere. The contemporaneous record supports the notes being prepared when and how Ms Brown said they were prepared. They do not purport to record everything, Lehrmann v Network Ten Pty Limited (Trial Judgment) [2024] FCA 369