Former Liberal Party staffer Bruce Lehrmann gave three different excuses for being at Parliament House on the night Brittany Higgins was allegedly raped, a jury has heard.
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Lehrmann is facing trial in the ACT Supreme Court charged with sexual intercourse without consent.
He has pleaded not guilty and denies he and Ms Higgins had any sexual interaction.
Ms Higgins alleges after they returned to Parliament House she fell asleep on a couch inside then defence industry minister Linda Reynolds' office and woke up to Lehrmann having sex with her.
She said he continued even after she told him to stop.
In an April 2021 police interview played for the jury, Lehrmann said he'd returned to Parliament House after a night out drinking with colleagues to collect his house keys.
He said Ms Higgins told him she also needed to get something from the office and so they shared an Uber in the early hours of Saturday morning.
Earlier, in audio played for the court of the pair arriving at the ministerial entrance to parliament, Lehrmann is heard telling security guards he was there to collect some work documents.
Lehrmann later told police there was nothing about Ms Higgins' behaviour that indicated he needed to look after her when the pair got to Parliament House.
He did not think Ms Higgins was drunk and only felt moderately intoxicated himself.
The court has previously heard Ms Higgins describe herself as being "as drunk as she'd ever been in her life" that night.
Former Parliament House security guard Nikola Anderson, who escorted them to the office, told the court she thought Ms Higgins was intoxicated because she struggled to put her shoes back on after going through the security screening.
After the pair entered the office Lehrmann told police he went to his desk and assumed Ms Higgins went to hers.
"I turned left to my desk and I didn't see her again," he said.
Lehrmann told police he was in parliament for about 45 minutes. He said he tended to some Question Time briefs for Senator Reynolds and left without checking where Ms Higgins was.
Meanwhile, the pair's former chief of staff Fiona Brown told the court there was no work that needed to be done that night.
She was informed there had been a security breach of the office after Parliament House security guards reported the matter.
"The DPS (Department of Parliamentary Services) report said that they were there for ... urgent work purposes," Ms Brown told the court.
"There was no urgent work purpose."
When Ms Brown asked Lehrmann why he and Ms Higgins had returned to Parliament House, he told her it was to drink whisky.
When she asked why, he told her "people do it all the time".
Lehrmann told police he did not have any alcohol in the office and that if he wanted to keep drinking he would have stayed at the nightclub.
His former colleague Nicole Hamer, who worked with him in Senator Reynolds' office while she was assistant home affairs minister, told the court Lehrmann used to keep alcohol at his desk.
Ms Hamer said Lehrmann had a big range of alcohol, including spirits, whisky and wine.
"It was quite a substantial amount of alcohol," she said.
Ms Hamer did not know if Lehrmann moved the alcohol to the new office when Senator Reynolds became defence industry minister.
Lehrmann's employment contract was later terminated as a result of the security breach, which was his second strike after previously failing to properly handle classified documents.
He worked in Parliament House for six years in various ministerial offices.
The trial continues.
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Australian Associated Press
