Brittany Higgins has confirmed she deleted messages and photos from her phone before handing it over to police.

A jury has heard it was not her intent to keep things from the officers investigating her alleged rape.

The former Liberal Party staffer is being cross-examined as the first witness in the criminal trial of Bruce Lehrmann, who has been accused of raping her.

He has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent.

Asked under cross-examination by prosecutor Steven Whybrow if she remembered deleting the messages, Ms Higgins said "potentially".

She cleared off her phone photographs showing her holding alcohol or with politicians.

"I wanted to scrub all the horrible parts of my life out of my day-to-day existence," she told the ACT Supreme Court on Friday.

Ms Higgins described her phone as her "life" and said she didn't want to see photos of former minister Linda Reynolds, for whom she worked when the alleged assault happened.

"I didn't want to see her face ... Sorry, she's not a bad person. But it is what it is," she said.

The court earlier heard Ms Higgins secretly recorded a phone conversation with her former boss Michaelia Cash in 2021, days after she resigned from her staffer position.

Senator Cash called to offer Ms Higgins alternatives to resigning from her ministerial office.

Ms Higgins said the phone call was strange because the senator was pretending as though she didn't know about her alleged rape even though the pair had spoken about it before.

"It was ridiculous. It was the weirdest phone call I have ever had in my life," she said.

Ms Higgins also recorded a conversation with Senator Cash's former chief of staff Daniel Try without his knowledge.

Defence lawyer Steven Whybrow put to Ms Higgins she had sent the recordings to multiple people, including journalists, to begin backgrounding for the story.

But Ms Higgins said it was for her legal protection and so she could corroborate her story.

"I was trying to give them (the recordings) to as many people as possible to have them just so that they existed," she said.

"It's my word against a cabinet minister's and the disparity between those two powers is ridiculous."

Mr Whybrow also put to Ms Higgins other inconsistencies in her story.

He questioned what Ms Higgins did with the white cocktail dress she was wearing on the night of the alleged assault.

He referred to her earlier story that she put the unwashed dress under her bed for six months before she laundered and wore it to a Liberal Party event.

He then showed the jury a photo of Ms Higgins wearing the dress to an event - a birthday dinner for Linda Reynolds - in May 2019, about two months after the alleged assault in the Liberal senator's office.

Mr Whybrow put to Ms Higgins she had not given true and correct evidence.

"I made a mistake, I wasn't trying to do anything, I was just wrong," Ms Higgins told the court.

Senators Cash and Reynolds have been listed as witnesses and could be called to give evidence.

The trial is expected to last for between four and six weeks.

© AAP 2022

A man who represents 12,500 Queensland cops and has made a number of controversial comments about domestic violence is set to be grilled about police culture at an inquiry.

Queensland Police Union President Ian Leavers will take the stand in Brisbane on Friday, the final day of hearings for the probe into police responses to domestic violence.

The union claimed last year that some people sought domestic violence orders to gain an advantage in family law disputes, in a submission to a federal parliamentary inquiry.

Mr Leavers also initially dismissed former Court of Appeal president Margaret McMurdo's landmark domestic violence report, which called for the commission of inquiry he will front, as "a another woke, out-of-touch report".

The probe has this week heard of multiple incidents of senior officers expressing misogynistic and racist attitudes, and assaulting, abusing, harassing and bullying female officers.

Mr Leavers says unsatisfactory behaviours and attitudes are not common among his members, which make up 99 per cent of the force.

"This involves only a very small minority of serving police officers," he said in a written affidavit, published by the inquiry in August.

"Furthermore, when inappropriate behaviour occurs nowadays, it is invariably the subject of timely and unbiased managerial (and often disciplinary) action in response.

"Whereas it was once unheard of for an officer to be disciplined for such conduct, now it is quite common."

The inquiry has heard this week that police perpetrators of abuse, harassment and bullying against colleagues are often being dealt with via local management resolutions (LMRs).

Under the LMR system, serious offenders have been disciplined via a brief chat with a fellow senior officer with no further action taken.

Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll admitted this week that a "very paramilitary" leadership style created widespread fear of speaking out in the QPS.

She said her officers' confidence in the controversial disciplinary system was understandably falling.

Mr Leavers' submission in August claimed the low number of complaints about police in domestic violence matters, compared to the large number of call outs, indicated the QPS had no "widespread cultural problem".

"Rather, what we see and hear from time to time are instances of individual failings and shortcomings, which in my experience is more likely due to workload pressures or inadequate training," he wrote.

"Whilst I have no doubt that some aggrieved persons experience inadequate responses from police due to a poor personal attitude of the officer involved, I believe (and the disciplinary data confirms) that would be a very small proportion of cases."

The inquiry before Justice Deborah Richards will resume later on Friday.

© AAP 2022

Brittany Higgins has told a court she is not ashamed of going public with details of her alleged rape before reopening her complaint with the police.

Ms Higgins is being cross-examined in the ACT Supreme Court criminal trial of Bruce Lehrmann, who has pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent.

Defence lawyer Steven Whybrow put to Ms Higgins she told the media about her alleged rape two years after it occurred because she wanted to damage the Liberal Party.

Ms Higgins said she wanted changes to address systemic problems about the treatment of women in Parliament House.

"I loved my party, I loved the Liberal Party," she said on Thursday.

She told the court the cultural issues and her alleged rape were two separate issues she wanted to address.

She decided to go down two avenues to address the issues by talking to the media and to the police about her allegations.

"I stand by my choice. I'm not ashamed of that," she said.

Ms Higgins said once she had spoken to journalists Samantha Maiden and Lisa Wilkinson about her allegations the story became outside of her control.

"It became not even about me or my story, it became about them (the journalists)," she said.

"Once I'd given an on-the-record interview ... it was out of my control ... it was up to them."

Mr Whybrow put to Ms Higgins a timeline of events she had written was prepared for the media rather than for the police.

Ms Higgins originally wrote it for the police but it was given to particular journalists when she and her partner David Sharaz were overwhelmed with media inquiries.

She said those journalists then circulated the dossier to others, which was a "breach of trust".

Mr Whybrow put to Ms Higgins police had told her media reporting could jeopardise the case.

Ms Higgins thought she would do one print and one television interview about her experience and then never talk about it again.

She also did not think police would prosecute her argument or that the matter would end up in court.

"I thought I'd go back to uni and disappear," she said.

Ms Higgins told the court she originally did not go ahead with a police complaint in 2019, when the alleged rape happened, because she feared she would lose her job.

After dreaming of becoming a political media adviser, Ms Higgins feared she would lose that opportunity if she made a police complaint.

"My interpretation of that was that if I raised it with police there were going to be problems."

She wanted to keep working for the Liberals and assist during the federal election but also wanted to proceed with the complaint.

"It became really apparent it was my job on the line ... I'd gone my entire life working towards this moment," she said.

She decided to "toe the party line" and not proceed further with the police complaint.

Ms Higgins worked with Linda Reynolds during the election but said she felt as though the Liberal senator did not like her because of the problems she had caused.

The jury was earlier shown footage from inside Parliament House on the night in March, 2019 that Ms Higgins alleges she was raped in the senator's office.

She cried in the witness box as the CCTV footage was played.

The trial continues on Friday.

© AAP 2022

Sydney is experiencing its wettest year on record as widespread rain and thunderstorms put large parts of NSW on flood alert.

By 1.30pm on Thursday the rain gauge at Sydney's Observatory Hill had passed 2200 millimetres recorded this year, breaking the annual rainfall record of 2194mm set in 1950.

With almost three months remaining in 2022 and a third consecutive La Nina declared, further falls mean the new record will be much higher.

After days of driving rain and flooding in inland NSW, a powerful storm system is tracking east with Sydney in for a "dangerous day" on Saturday, Emergency Services Minister Steph Cooke said.

"We know that our catchments are saturated," she said.

"The dams are full and our rivers are already swollen so any extra rainfall - no matter how minor - is likely to exacerbate existing flooding."

The ongoing deluge will heighten flood risks in the coming days across inland and eastern parts of the state, Gabrielle Woodhouse from the Bureau of Meteorology said.

Over the last few days, parts of NSW have already been hit with double to triple the amount of rain they would usually see in a month.

Thunderstorms with isolated supercells will continue in the state's far west on Thursday, bringing the risk of heavy rain, flash flooding, damaging winds and hail.

On Friday a trough and cold front will move across NSW, bringing another widespread band of rain and storms.

Conditions will ease on Saturday morning before a low pressure system forms along the coast in the afternoon, bringing renewed rain in the evening before conditions ease on Sunday.

Renewed and prolonged flooding is continuing in inland NSW at the rivers Namoi, Macquarie, Bogan, Lachlan, Murrumbidgee, Murray, Edward, Culgoa, Birrie, Bokhara, Warrego, Paroo, Barwon and Darling.

Outback towns being monitored closely include Gunnedah, Narrabri, Tamworth, Dubbo, Forbes and Bathurst.

As the weekend continues, the bureau expects to issue further flood warnings on the Hunter River, for Wollombi Brook and at western Sydney's Hawkesbury-Nepean rivers, in Menangle and parts of Penrith.

SES Commissioner Carlene York warned renewed flooding could present different challenges, especially to inland communities.

"This particular event on saturated ground means that things can happen very quickly," she said.

"Don't assume you will get a warning ... it may go straight to an evacuation order."

The Bathurst 1000 is also causing headaches for authorities, with tens of thousands of motorsport fans due to gather at Mount Panorama on the last weekend of school holidays.

"Please don't race to the races," Acting Deputy Police Commissioner Peter Cotter said.

Drivers should be patient and understand they will face delays as some roads will be flooded.

Farmers are also concerned the latest deluge will destroy another crop and graziers have been warned to shelter lambs and sheep.

The bureau has warned livestock is at risk with temperatures set to plunge in the Illawarra, South Coast, Southern Tablelands, South West Slopes, Snowy Mountains and ACT regions.

© AAP 2022