Scott Morrison has rejected claims from a former staffer that he deliberately misled Parliament in 2021 over her handling of Brittany Higgins' rape allegations, but said he "cannot fully discount" the conflicting recollections.
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Fiona Brown, a former senior staffer to Mr Morrison, told The Australian newspaper the former PM had wrongly told the House he had discussed handling the Higgins matter with her.
Speaking in the House on Tuesday, Mr Morrison sought to clear the record, saying the article was "the first occasion I'd been made aware that Ms Brown had a different account of the events".
On February 18, 2021, Anthony Albanese asked Mr Morrison during Question Time whether he had spoken to Ms Brown about Ms Higgins' claim that her job had been threatened.
Ms Brown was Senator Linda Reynolds' acting chief of staff at the time of the alleged rape. Ms Higgins claimed at the time that Ms Brown had "continually made me feel as if my ongoing employment would be jeopardised if I proceeded any further with the matter".
Responding to Mr Albanese's question, the then-prime minister said he had spoken to Ms Brown on the matter. But Ms Brown alleged in The Australian Mr Morrison had approached her after Question Time and said "we've spoken, haven't we?".
On Tuesday, Mr Morrison said while he had believed his 2021 response to be accurate, given the "considerable activity of that week" and the time since then, he "cannot fully discount that [Ms Brown's] recollection of those events now were the more accurate".
"However, I reject absolutely any suggestion of deliberate intent in any such possible inaccuracy in my response and am pleased to have taken the first opportunity available to clarify these matters to the House," he said.
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Ms Brown also accused the Prime Minister's office of abandoning her after Ms Higgins claimed that she had handled her rape allegation poorly.
"It all becomes about the survival of the PM," Ms Brown told the paper.
"You are invisible, marginalised, isolated ... no one wanted to know."
Meanwhile, just minutes before Mr Morrison's statement in the House, Labor frontbencher Katy Gallagher defended herself in the Senate against separate accusations that she misled Parliament on her knowledge of Ms Higgins' rape allegations in 2021.
In Senate estimates in June 2021, Senator Gallagher had responded to claims Labor figures knew of the rape allegations before they were aired on The Project, saying: "No one had any knowledge. How dare you?"
But leaked text messages also published in The Australian claim to show Ms Higgins' partner, David Sharaz, had been in contact with Senator Gallagher ahead of the broadcast.
On Tuesday, Ms Gallagher said she had been given a "heads up" about the allegations in the days before they become public, but had not used that information.
"I take my responsibilities to this place as a senator very seriously. And I have always conducted myself with the highest levels of integrity, and I always will," Senator Gallagher told Parliament.
"I was shocked at the assertion made by Senator Reynolds with the clear implication that I was responsible or had some involvement with making that story public. That was not true. It was never true.
"And I responded to that allegation by saying no one had any knowledge."
She said she had explained this wider context to Ms Reynolds at a private dinner that evening, "an explanation she accepted at the time some two years ago".