Brittany Higgins' staggering windfall for selling her French chateau is revealed - as she scores a job despite being awarded 40 years in lost wages over being medically unfit to work
Brittany Higgins has landed yet another windfall after selling her taxpayer-funded French chateau within days of announcing a plush new gig.
Higgins and her husband David Sharaz purchased the three-bed, two-bath estate, about 100km east of Bordeaux in south-west France, in 2023.
The exact closing price was not clear but followed repeated cuts to the asking price from €420,000 (AU$682,820) last year to €350,000 (AU$600,000) earlier this year.
While they were widely tipped to sell the property at a loss after repeatedly lowering the listing price, it will no doubt have improved the couple's financial outlook.
Not least because it came within days of Higgins announcing she would return to the workforce at boutique PR agency Third Hemisphere.
She shared the announcement in the Australian Financial Review alongside a caption reading: 'Your girl is finally back in the workforce!'
Higgins took the job, where Sharaz also works, despite four years earlier receiving a government settlement which included a $1.48million payout for lost earning capacity.
The former Liberal staffer made a compensation claim for damages in March 2022 after alleging she was raped in parliament by her former colleague, Bruce Lehrmann.
Ms Higgins shared the news of her appointment on Instagram with the caption: 'Your girl is finally back in the workforce!'
He has always denied the claims but was found to have raped Ms Higgins on the balance of probabilities by Justice Michael Lee in April last year - a decision Lehrmann is currently appealing.
In Ms Higgins' draft statement of claim, first reported by The Australian newspaper, it was stated that she had a 'reasonable expectation of being promoted regularly and to eventually pursue her own political career, before suffering from the injuries and disabilities'.
She had been 'diagnosed as medically unfit for any form of employment, and has been given a very poor prognosis for future employment'.
The claims were untested in court given Ms Higgins was awarded the $2.4million by payout after one day of mediation talks.
More than half of the sum was in respect of her loss of earnings, while the rest was made up of medical expenses, legal costs and '$400,000 for hurt, distress and humiliation'.
The couple purchased the house using the proceeds of the settlement, of which she said she retained about $1.9million after taxes and fees.
Within months, the couple were forced to list the property for sale to meet her legal costs in the ongoing defamation suit brought by her former boss, Linda Reynolds.
A verdict has yet to be handed down for Ms Reynolds' defamation suit against Ms Higgins which concluded in September last year following a five-week trial.
Higgins wrote on Wednesday she was 'so excited to be the new Director of Public Affairs for the female-founded public relations agency'.
'It was so personally important to me that wherever I ended up working had values that aligned with my own,' she said.
'To be in a workplace run by a fellow survivor and someone who fundamentally believes in the importance of corporate social responsibility is an absolute delight.'
Senator Reynolds launched a separate legal action against the Commonwealth in April claiming it failed to act in her best interests in reaching the settlement.
In a statement released at the time, Senator Reynolds said the payout 'sent a message' that Higgins' claims, including that her then-boss had failed to support her following the rape allegations, were true.
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