Brittany Higgins has been appointed Executive Director of the Vida Fund, launching the group's new strategy this week by naming One Nation as its chief concern, in what Sky News and the Daily Mail both characterised as an attack on the party. The appointment comes 6 months after the Federal Court declared her bankrupt.
Announcing the role, Higgins said One Nation and the new right were "trying to mainstream misogyny on a scale Australians have never seen before" and singled out Barnaby Joyce over reproductive rights. The fund says it will back independent female candidates and hold parties accountable on policies affecting women.
The announcement landed in a crowded week. Labor had emailed supporters asking for $27 donations to stop the rise of One Nation, and One Nation counterpunched with its own "Fire the Liar" campaign aimed at Anthony Albanese, raising roughly $2 million in just over a day. Albanese cast doubt on the figures and One Nation said an independent audit verified them.
Video: via Sky News. Brittany Higgins launches attack on One Nation.
Who owns the Vida Fund
The Vida Fund launched in March 2025 with $100,000 in donations and commitments to support independent candidates against major party MPs. It's named after suffragist Vida Goldstein and carries an advisory council of prominent names including Wendy McCarthy, Hannah Ferguson and Jo Dyer.
The corporate record is less grand. An ASIC current company extract obtained by One News Australia shows the entity behind the brand is Vida Impact Fund Pty Ltd, ACN 683 675 407, a proprietary company registered on 14 January 2025 under a placeholder ACN name and renamed 9 days later.
Jo Dyer, who ran as an independent for Boothby in 2022, is its director, its company secretary and the owner of all 10 of its shares. A second director was appointed in February 2025. The fund's own social media carries the required electoral tag: "Authorised by J. Dyer, Vida Impact Fund Pty Ltd, Ultimo NSW." Donations to the Vida Fund go to that company. A proprietary company is a lawful and common structure for a campaign vehicle, and there's no suggestion donations have been used improperly.
Higgins holds no registered position at it. Under the Corporations Act, an undischarged bankrupt can't act as a company director or manage a corporation without court permission. Her Executive Director title is a staff role, the standard label for an advocacy group's top employee, and it doesn't appear anywhere on the ASIC record. Being employed by a company isn't prohibited under the Act.
How she came to be bankrupt
Higgins was declared bankrupt on 12 December 2025 after Linda Reynolds pursued the costs of their defamation case. Justice Paul Tottle of the WA Supreme Court awarded Reynolds $315,000 in damages last August over two social media posts, plus $26,000 in interest and 80% of her legal bill, which Reynolds' lawyer Martin Bennett said could exceed $1 million.
Tottle found the posts carried false claims that Reynolds had mishandled Higgins' rape allegation, orchestrated harassment and sought to silence sexual assault victims. The 360 page judgment said Higgins made 26 false or misleading statements in media interviews after her alleged assault. Higgins apologised to Reynolds after the verdict. Her husband David Sharaz was ordered to pay $85,000 plus interest and costs and was also served a bankruptcy notice.
Bennett has made clear where Reynolds' recovery effort is headed, telling media: "Get behind the trust. Where's the $2.4 million?" That's a reference to Higgins' compensation payout from the Commonwealth. Under bankruptcy law, a bankrupt's income must be disclosed to their trustee, and earnings above a set threshold flow to creditors. Reynolds is the creditor who put her there. Any income she earns is now a matter for that process.
What the courts found, both ways
The record cuts in both directions and both halves belong on it. In April 2024, Justice Michael Lee of the Federal Court found on the balance of probabilities that Bruce Lehrmann raped Higgins in Parliament House in 2019. The same judge called her an "unsatisfactory witness" whose evidence included untruths, which he considered consistent with a trauma affected victim.
Lehrmann denies the allegation. He lost his Federal Court appeal in December, with the full court finding he had actual knowledge of the lack of consent, and on 9 April the High Court refused his application for special leave, ending his avenues to challenge the finding. His 2022 criminal trial was aborted over juror misconduct and no criminal findings were made against him.
Her own question
This is Higgins' second professional landing in just over a year. She left PR agency Third Hemisphere after 5 months as director of public affairs, a role she announced with the question, "How long do I have to be the story for?" Eight months after leaving that job, she's taken the most public facing chair in a national political campaign. Readers can do their own arithmetic on that one.
GetUp! other anti One Nation campaign
The Higgins household has recent form on this beat. At May's Farrer by-election, progressive lobby group GetUp ran an advertising campaign reported at $600,000 aimed at stopping One Nation from winning the seat, spanning television, billboards, radio, digital platforms and 100,000 text messages sent directly to voters. GetUp's own media releases attacking One Nation during that campaign listed David Sharaz, Higgins' husband, as the organisation's media contact.
One Nation's David Farley won the seat anyway, with 39.5% of the primary vote.
There's no suggestion the Vida Fund and GetUp are linked. They're separate organisations running separate campaigns. It's simply a matter of record that within the space of a month, one half of the couple worked on a $600,000 campaign against One Nation and the other half became the public face of a new one.
Comment: the misogyny alarm rings selectively
Now the part of this that doesn't survive 5 minutes of political memory. Australian politics has never been gentle with anybody. Tony Abbott spent a career as the "Mad Monk." Scott Morrison copped "liar from the Shire" from crowds and commentators alike. Nobody formed a defence fund for either of them, and nobody called it hate. When the target's a man, it's robust democracy. The alarm about cruelty in public life rings for some women and stays silent for others.
Because if mistreatment of a woman in politics is the test, Pauline Hanson is the control case. Nearly 3 decades of relentless ridicule. A 2003 conviction, a 3 year sentence and 11 weeks in prison before the Queensland Court of Appeal quashed the convictions entirely. Through all of it, the people now alarmed about misogyny in Australian politics never assembled so much as a GoFundMe or stood up for Pauline Hanson.
The first target of the country's newest anti misogyny campaign is the woman who founded and still leads her own party after almost 30 years of copping exactly the treatment the campaign says it exists to stop.
Public life is fair game, and One Nation's policies are as open to criticism as anyone's. The fund is entitled to campaign. Voters are entitled to know that the campaign is run through one woman's private company, fronted by an undischarged bankrupt, and aimed at a party whose leader has worn worse than anything its donors have ever objected to.
