There's always a certain frisson when politicians stand on a platform and accuse other politicians of taking political advantage.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
The closer to an election, both before and after, the more tingly the feeling is.
The first episode of Utopia this week saw the fictional, but highly realistic, new assistant minister for infrastructure not remotely interested in the portfolio briefings. Instead, and no need for a spoiler alert, he spent all of his time taking calls and trying to shore up political support.
Politics, eh?
There has hardly been a case as politically charged as what happened inside the Parliament House office of the then-minister Linda Reynolds on March 23, 2019.
And the gaze has sharply shifted onto the now-Labor government.
Even if, as the publishing newspaper The Australian said, large parts of the messages have been redacted for privacy reasons we know that the phone's contents have been widely seen and pored over by police and sections of the media. Who else?
Ms Higgins had to give the phone up to police as part of the investigation and has bitterly complained about it being used, in some cases against her, all along.
And now we see moral outrage that the former Liberal media adviser and her partner David Sharaz, a former Parliament House journalist and communications specialist, sought to maximise coverage of her story in February 2021 by working political and media contacts.
Spare them in this case. They were using their job skills as a duo at the time against a much larger operation: the Morrison government. The insider relationship between the media and politics is a fraught one. People are kidding themselves, or the public, to say backgrounding does not go on all the time.
And now the media bites back anyway.
READ MORE
Those private messages, not denied by the couple, are out there and there is no doubt we have to deal with the problem for Katy Gallagher.
In particular, the claims of Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz that they had contact with senior Labor politicians before her rape claim was made public.
She told Senator Reynolds in Senate estimates that "No-one had any knowledge. How dare you?" in June 2021, but Mr Sharaz, four days before the Higgins allegations became publicly known, was texting Ms Higgins saying "she's really invested now ha ha". Penny Wong was also there taking umbrage, saying she had "no knowledge of this until it came out".
The person no one can question is the late Labor senator Kimberley Kitching, who was the one who had warned Senator Reynolds that her side was on the attack.
In what has been published this week, Mr Sharaz, who has been painted as some sort of puppet master exploiting his partner's "fame", is boasting of contacts with Mr Albanese, the then-Labor spokesperson for women, Tanya Plibersek and, of course, Senator Gallagher.
"Look, I knew Mr Sharaz from my previous role, he was a journalist here in Canberra when I was Chief Minister, so I knew him. But I have nothing further to add," the Senator told RN Breakfast when she last popped up on Wednesday.
"My statements are all on the record and I'm comfortable with those."
The opposition appears to be on a fishing expedition asking the Labor leadership team to "front up" and explain the Labor timeline on Brittany Higgins.
But there remains a legitimate set of questions for Senator Gallagher to work out if she has misled Parliament.
When did she first hear about the Brittany Higgins rape allegations?
When did she first speak to Brittany Higgins, in person or over the phone?
And did she receive a copy of the interview (by The Project) before it went to air?
The Canberra Times has asked, and we are not alone.
The criminal case may have been aborted with no findings made against the accused man Bruce Lehrmann, but who knew what and when, as well as the question of what was done with that information, is causing all sorts of problems for the most senior members of the Albanese government.