Spotlight on Samantha Maiden
Winner of the 2021 Our Watch Award for excellence in reporting on violence against women and children
“Young staffer Brittany Higgins says she was raped at Parliament House” “Parliament office ‘steam cleaned’ after alleged attack” and “Minister Michaelia Cash’s voicemail message to Brittany Higgins”.
“It’s not something that I expected or Brittany expected, that the story would run for as long and as hard as it did. Partly I think that was related to women who literally took to the streets to protest about this. But it was also a product of good, old fashioned reporting.”
News.com.au’s political editor Samantha Maiden followed up her 2020 Walkley Award, for her scoop on Scott Morrison’s secret bushfire holiday to Hawaii, with the Our Watch Award at the 2021 Mid-Year Celebration of Journalism.
The Our Watch Award recognises excellence in reporting on violence against women and children, and Maiden won for her work reporting on Brittany Higgins’ allegations of rape at Parliament House.
“Samantha Maiden’s work fulfilled the extensive criteria for the Our Watch awards and showed enterprise, tenacity and compassion,” the judges said, “while displaying her customary mastery of reporting on the political process. This led to a number of reviews at Parliament House which have the potential to improve safety for women in politics.”
We spoke with Samantha Maiden about the “golden thread” of government secrecy running through her “Scott Morrison holiday” scoop and the Brittany Higgins allegations, and the power and bravery of making the decision to speak up.
What have been the most important impacts of this reporting, for you?
I think the most important one was that Brittany Higgins felt safe and comfortable to talk to us. And we put a lot of work into that, which is what these awards are really about. I mean, I spoke to Brittany for about a month before we published the story, and we did a lot of groundwork.
Because, as is always the case when people make these allegations and go public, it is a really traumatising experience for them. It is hard for them to have to tell their story. And it was hard for Brittany Higgins to tell her story to me. And I was very alive to, I suppose, doing my best not to retraumatise her.
For example, early on we thought that video would be a good idea. At some stage during that process, she talked to me about the fact that she wanted to maybe do a TV interview. She wanted to go and talk to The Project and we talked about that. And I said, “Look, of course you should go and do that.”
One of the reasons why I decided that was because I knew that, when she eventually did go and go to speak to The Project, that it would be a very long and beautifully done interview. It was a very powerful interview and amazing work by The Project, but still traumatising talking about it.
I spoke to work and said, “I just don’t know if really it’s the best thing for her, to put her through something like that again with us. We’ve already spoken to her.” So that was one of the reasons that shaped what we decided to do.
Talk us through how the story evolved for you.
I knew Brittany Higgins in passing and we had mutual friends. But basically it was my work, I suppose, in the space of talking about the conditions staff worked in at Parliament House that I think got Brittany Higgins thinking about whether I was the right person for the job. I think she liked the fact that she regarded me as pretty fearless. She wanted someone who would really hold the government to account and follow up all of those issues in parliament. And I think that’s why she chose me.
I mean, you asked me at the beginning of the interview about the important things that have flowed from this. Her brave decision to speak out on that, which has not been without a great personal toll on her, has sparked an incredible proliferation of inquiries and investigations. Whether it is the report into the workplace culture at Parliament House, the prime minister calling multiple investigations, including the Gaetjens investigation, for example, into who knew what and when in his office.
There were a number of different strands to the story. And I think it’s a really interesting question of why this story had this impact now. Because sadly, there are many women in Australia who have stories that are very similar to the allegations that Brittany Higgins makes. They haven’t all had such a big impact.
And I think Brittany Higgins and myself were very mindful of the fact that other women experience this who don’t have, for example, the advantages that she has in terms of being incredibly articulate, educated, aware of how the political structure works. But in a sense, I think that’s why the story really became quite powerful.
Because I think everyday women and everyday men, as well, looked at this story and thought, “Well, if she has encountered the difficulties that she has with all of the advantages that she has, what hope is there for the rest of us or other people that don’t have those advantages?” That was an interesting part of the equation as well.
The Our Watch Award is for the best reporting of the year that works to stop gendered violence. What does it mean to you to be recognised as having done the best work of the year in that space?
It’s a great honour. And let’s be honest, there were two other finalists that were excellent and that I think were deserving of winning this award. I thought that the work that Four Corners did on that story about Tinder was really fascinating and interesting, and raising some really important questions about how changing technology and dating apps, in some cases, are making the world a more dangerous place for women in terms of making it easier for predators.
And I think that Lisa Wilkinson’s interview with Brittany Higgins on The Project was really powerful and really important. The work that both Lisa and I did, I think, worked really beautifully together. I was on the ground in Canberra, following it up, and we broke a number of stories beyond the first interview including, for example, the fact that the room was cleaned. Now, that’s not something that came from Brittany Higgins. In fact, at the time it was scary for Brittany.
These were things that she was finding out as a result of our own reporting. And we were able to harness the power of parliament in terms of Question Time, Senate estimates, and getting questions on notice, to really run this story right to ground. There was a lot of work that came out of that. There was a lot of revelations that kept the story going and kept the pressure up.
That’s one of the reasons why — it’s unusual and it’s not something that I expected or Brittany expected — that the story would run for as long and as hard as it did. Partly I think that was related to women who literally took to the streets to protest about this. But it was also a product of good, old fashioned reporting.
We didn’t just stop with the interview that we did with Brittany Higgins. We continued to pursue the story down all the highways and all the byways that it went.
In light of the social impact that the Scott Morrison holiday story had, and the Brittany Higgins story has had, what are your thoughts about why it’s important to continue supporting quality journalism?
Well, at the end of the day, I mean there’s a golden thread with both of those stories, to some extent. Not that I’m suggesting that the Prime Minister knew about the Brittany Higgins allegation, because he says, in fact, he didn’t know about it until we broke the story on February 15.
But the golden thread is this idea of a failure to disclose relevant facts. Of a culture of don’t ask, don’t tell, in the relationship to Brittany Higgins.
And I asked the Prime Minister within the first 24, 48 hours of the story breaking, “Do you have a don’t ask, don’t tell culture in government?” And he said, that was a fair enough question, because he was not happy about the fact that his entire office, very senior people in the government, spent a whole weekend, three days basically, talking to me about this story, and no one thought it was important enough to tell him.
I acknowledged that I didn’t necessarily know that it would run as hard as it did, that it would become such a big story when I wrote it. But I was nonetheless surprised when it emerged that the Prime Minister was completely in the dark. I think other people have raised this question around the Morrison government and this issue of secrecy.
There’s issues of secrecy going right back to his time when he was Border Protection minister, and debate about the amount of information that was available in relation to asylum seeker boats, for example. Then, in relation to the bushfire story, that was just bizarre. He went overseas and didn’t tell anyone, and somehow thought that they could get away with it. I understand that people have lives and he wanted to take a break. But to go overseas in the middle of a bushfire and not tell anyone was, I think, a bizarre situation.
At the end of the day, there are less journalists doing more work these days, but the work that they do can still be very important.
I thought it was also a fantastic acknowledgement of digital journalism and the work that news.com.au do, also with Nina Funnell and Kerry Warren, won another Mid-Year Award for their coverage of the Let Her Speak campaign.
So it was really fantastic, I think, to see digital journalism on it in that way. I’ve worked for newspapers and I think newspapers are great, but I think the world is changing and the old fashioned idea that the big stories were broken by the newspapers and the newspapers alone is changing. I think that the work that news.com.au is doing is a good example of that.
Is there anybody that you would like to thank for their input into this story?
Absolutely. First and foremost, I would like to thank Brittany Higgins. At the end of the day, the power of this story is all about the power of Brittany Higgins, and the resilience and bravery that she has chosen to come forward and tell her story.
I’d also like to thank my boss, Lisa Muxworthy, who is the editor-in-chief of news.com.au, who’s given me incredible support to write this story. Great leadership, great ideas. Also Kerry Warren, who gave me a lot of help with this story as well and who was also, obviously, awarded for the Let Her Speak Campaign. And also Ollie Murray, who is the editor at news.com.au.
It’s a great team of people at news.com.au. They were very supportive, but this story is really about the women who have had the bravery to come out and talk about these allegations and decide to give up their anonymity. It’s a big decision because it’s a decision that you can’t really unwind for the rest of your life. And I think a lot of women in Australia are grateful that Brittany Higgins did.
Samantha Maiden is the political editor for news.com.au. She won a Walkley Award for her coverage of federal politics and Scott Morrison’s secret bushfire holiday to Hawaii in 2020. A press gallery veteran, she has covered federal politics for more than 20 years, including for The Australian and NewsCorp’s Sunday papers. But her career began in South Australia, where she edited Adelaide University’s student newspaper On Dit in 1992 and covered state politics. She is a regular guest on the ABC’s Insiders and The Project. Her first book, Party Animals was published in 2020. Her career highlights also include being called a ‘mad witch’ by Peter Dutton.
