The morning after Brittany Higgins spoke at a March4Justice rally outside Parliament House, her boyfriend boasted she had overshadowed Lisa Wilkinson and her daughter.
David Sharaz was quoting Ms Higgins’s best friend Emma Webster when he sent his girlfriend a congratulatory message after she attended the Canberra protest two years ago.
The former Liberal Party staffer had stood out in her all-white ensemble and towered over the diminutive Wilkinson, who was then still co-host of The Project.
‘”Emma: Lisa and the daughter really pale in comparison to Britt and her bodyguard,”‘ Mr Sharaz wrote to Ms Higgins on March 16, 2021.
‘We exude power,’ he added. ‘They disappear into the crowd.’
The messages are contained in a leaked cache of text exchanges between Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz, seen by Daily Mail Australia.
The day after Brittany Higgins spoke at the March4Justice Rally outside Parliament House in 2019, her boyfriend boasted that as a couple they were more powerful than Lisa Wilkinson. (Ms Wilkinson’s daughter Billi FitzSimons, circled, was present at the protest with Ms Higgins)
The day before the rally, Ms Higgins told Mr Sharaz she had been anxious about appearing on stage after Wilkinson, writing, ‘I don’t want to follow her hahah’, and, ‘That’s very intimidating’.
Mr Sharaz responded, ‘No it’s all about you’, ‘It’s wonderful’ and ‘She loves you’.
In other messages, Ms Higgins mocked Wilkinson for repeatedly mentioning her journalistic achievements in a telephone conversation and admitted she knew little about her decades-long career.
‘She kept referring to her career assuming I’d know information about her which I found kinda funny,’ Ms Higgins said in one message.
Mr Sharaz also suggested Wilkinson was not tech-savvy, noting she did not use WhatsApp, adding, ‘She didn’t even know what LinkedIn was.’
Wilkinson had introduced Ms Higgins at the March4Justice rally, watched by her daughter Billi FitzSimons, who was a writer for women’s website Mamamia at the time.
Billi is now the editor of youth news publication The Daily Aus and her father is Wilkinson’s husband, author and onetime rugby international Peter FitzSimons.
The day before the March4Justice rally, Ms Higgins told Mr Sharaz she had been anxious about appearing on stage after Wilkinson, writing: ‘That’s very intimidating’. Ms Higgins is pictured at the protest with Wilkinson
David Sharaz was quoting Ms Higgins’s best friend Emma Webster when he sent his girlfriend a congratulatory message about her appearance at the March4Justice protest
Thousands of women gathered at 40 protests across Australia on March4Justice day to demand an end to gendered violence, inequality, and misogyny in the workplace.
Ms Higgins attacked then prime minister Scott Morrison during her speech, claiming he ‘undermined and discredited my loved ones’ after she accused a colleague of raping her inside Parliament House.
‘I have read the news updates every day at 5am because I was waking up to new information about my own sexual assault through the media,’ she told the audience.
Earlier, Wilkinson told the throng: ‘If everything Brittany told us is true, Parliament House appears to the be the easiest place in this country to rape women and get away with it.’
The previous month Ms Higgins had alleged in an interview with Wilkinson on The Project that she was sexually assaulted in the office of then defence minister Linda Reynolds in March 2019.
Ms Higgins mocked Wilkinson for repeatedly mentioning her journalistic achievements and stated she knew little about her decades-long career. ‘She kept referring to her career assuming I’d know information about her which I found kinda funny’
Bruce Lehrmann was later named as Ms Higgins’s alleged attacker but always maintained his innocence and a rape charge against him was withdrawn after juror misconduct aborted his trial.
In WhatsApp exchanges between Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz the couple discussed making arrangements to speak to Wilkinson ahead of The Project interview.
On January 20, 2021, Mr Sharaz wrote to Ms Higgins, ‘Lisa rang. Let’s chat tonight. It’s good news.’
‘She wants to fly me and you down on Monday for a meeting with her and the EP at a non-disclosed location…. Are you able to sneak off on Monday?
‘She also said to me, “We need to make sure we hold britts hand through all this. She can call me anytime”.
‘So if you want to talk to her first before anything you can. We can use my mums phone etc x Oh it’s not for the interview btw. It’s just for a meeting. To talk logistics.’
The next morning Ms Higgins told Mr Sharaz, ‘FYI – I WhatsApped Lisa’.
He responded ‘Can I see X’ followed by, ‘Haha did Lisa have WhatsApp? She didn’t even know what Linkedin was ha ha.’
Regarding the prospect of Ms Higgins talking to Wilkinson, Mr Sharaz wrote: ‘Let me know how it goes. You can finally ask her if she has caps on her teeth.’
‘We exude power,’ Mr Sharaz wrote of himself and Ms Higgins (pictured). Comparing the couple with Lisa Wilkinson and her daughter Billi, he added: ‘They disappear into the crowd’
Later that day, Mr Sharaz wrote: ‘All I care about what that she was sensitive and supportive of you?’
Ms Higgins replied: ‘Yes, she was lovely. Very nice. She kept referring to her career assuming I’d know information about her which I found kinda funny.’
Mr Sharaz: ‘Hahahahhaaahhaaahaha’
Ms Higgins: ‘Because beyond broadly liking her, I am not intimately aware of the timeline of her career haha.’
Six days after those messages, Ms Higgins and Mr Sharaz met Wilkinson and Network Ten producer Angus Llewellyn in a Sydney hotel room.
The meeting was intended to lay the groundwork for Wilkinson’s interview with Ms Higgins and the entire five-hour conversation was recorded.
During the chat Wilkinson namedropped actor Natalie Portman, bragged about knowing ex-prime ministers and called herself a ‘champion for women’.
Mr Sharaz suggested Wilkinson was not tech-savvy, noting she did not use WhatsApp and stating, ‘She didn’t even know what Linkedin was’
As the group dined on corn chips, vegetable spring rolls and calamari, Mr Sharaz asked Wilkinson what she stood to gain from interviewing his girlfriend about her rape allegations.
‘Champion for women who are suppressed,’ she replied, immediately.
‘I’m always about exactly the same thing – the inequality that exists out there, whether it’s white privilege, whether it’s male domination, whether it’s criminal activity that is suppressed.’
Wilkinson then described her upbringing: ‘I’m a girl from the western suburbs of Sydney, I’ll always be motivated by exactly the same thing. People who deserve to be heard, not being heard.’
The day after the meeting Mr Sharaz sent Ms Higgins another message on WhatsApp.
‘Lisa rang me… not sure why,’ he wrote. ‘…She seems to really care… or is very good at acting.’
