Higgins rape claim begs the question: who actually cared?

Parliament crammed at least four news cycles into Tuesday. Craig Kelly quit the Liberals. Morrison offered a $50 increase in the JobSeeker base rate. Facebook backed down. And the government ran for cover over an alleged rape in a minister’s suite. The stress from that last one will not go away.

Reynolds is the minister with most questions to answer over the alleged rape of Brittany Higgins in March 2019. It took place in her office. How much did she know about what happened? At what point was it clear to her that this was a question of rape?

Higgins says Reynolds avoided her after she found out what happened. “The minister clearly didn’t want to hear about it anymore,” she told The Project. How does the minister remember that time?

Reynolds was meant to be at the National Press Club on Wednesday to take questions like these. Only a genuine health crisis could justify her decision to cancel. Some of her own colleagues are sceptical about her absence, but MPs who spoke with her on Tuesday say she talked with complete certainty about delivering her speech the next day.

Nobody will say it publicly, but there are more than a few Liberals and Nationals who think the very fact of the heart condition means Reynolds should find another job. It is a hasty judgment. It is also at odds with at least one lesson from history.

Having a heart condition did not stop Kevin Rudd becoming prime minister in 2007 after plenty of publicity about an operation on his aortic valve years earlier. Having another operation in 2011 did not stop him becoming PM again in 2013.When Rudd lost power, either at the hands of Bill Shorten (yes, and others) or the Australian public, it wasn’t because of his ticker.

So Reynolds can be direct with voters about her condition. For the moment, her office will not even say what it is. It is the wrong approach. The bigger questions are about her head, not her heart. Her judgment, not her compassion. The strongest rebuke on this comes from Morrison himself, who says he should have been told about the alleged rape sooner. Why did she not take that one simple step? Why did she not say: “Prime Minister, this debate in the media about the treatment of women in Parliament only scratches the surface. I can’t tell you the names but I know of one case that is far, far worse.“

Perhaps that would not have changed anything, but Morrison said on Thursday she could have given him “anonymised” information about what happened.

Morrison insists he only knew of the alleged rape on February 15, when it was reported in the media. Labor mocks the claim but has no proof he is wrong. Has the Prime Minister misled Parliament? What he has done is quite different. He has placed his neck on a guillotine and put the blade under the control of anyone who can produce a call record, an email or any other evidence that he lied. No Prime Minister takes that risk lightly. Morrison must be very, very confident he is right.

Will Reynolds have to go? Morrison made no mention of her rush to hospital when he spoke at the start of question time on Wednesday. He did not praise her, wish her well or update the House on her condition. Only the next day, when asked if her position was tenable, did he comment. “She’s doing a great job.” It was the answer he had to give.

Others are not helping much. Marise Payne, the Minister for Women, has been as visible as a submarine. Very quiet engine, no torpedo. Payne spoke on radio on February 15 and again three days later but has not gone out to defend Reynolds this week.

Payne is too silent too often, something her colleagues accept with resignation. But this was a fortnight of Parliament dominated by one issue, the sexual assault of women, and the Minister for Women barely emerged from her office and the Senate chamber. Only when Morrison attended a parliamentary breakfast for International Women’s Day did Payne make a brief media appearance. She stood behind the Prime Minister. He did all the talking.

Time and again, cabinet ministers choose not to speak up. When police told Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton about the case on February 11 this year, he chose not to tell Morrison immediately about claims of rape in their own wing of Parliament House. Dutton had the discretion to tell the leader. He decided not to do so.

Dutton said it was a “she said, he said” matter. He left it to his chief-of-staff to talk to Morrison’s chief-of-staff the next day. No urgency.

The questions will not go away. And they are not so much about who knew what and when but about who did what and when, because that explains who, if anyone, actually cared. Reynolds seemed to care, even if she failed to do enough. Those who know her describe her as a strong defender of women during her time in the military, where she served three decades in the Army Reserves, gained a Conspicuous Service Cross and reached the rank of Brigadier.

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Morrison is reluctant to trigger another reshuffle. Reynolds, in turn, is said to be champing at the bit to get back to her job. She may be out of hospital as soon as Friday and could return to her office after a week on leave. That will be a good time for her to take the questions she missed on Wednesday.