Sources familiar with the negotiations said the settlement offer was essentially unchanged from early March,whenRugg failed to secure an injunction to stop Ryan ending her employment.
Taxpayers will foot the bill for the Commonwealth and Ryan’s court costs.
Rugg and Ryan declined to comment on Monday.
The abandoned lawsuit brings to an end an unlikely and ultimately,ill-fated partnership between a former director of neurology at the Royal Children’s Hospital and a former campaign director of GetUp!,in their new respective roles as MP for Kooyong and chief of staff,in the heady months after last year’s federal election.
Ryan and Rugg initially formed a close working relationship,which included attending AFLW matches together and introducing their families to one another as they tried to find a way to realise Ryan’s ambitious political agenda with Rugg as her only full-time adviser.
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This followed a decision by Albanese to cut the Commonwealth’s staffing allocation to independent MPs from four advisers to one.
Although Rugg was nominally employed as Ryan’s chief of staff,her base salary of $136,607 is the pay rate set for a junior adviser. Rugg received an allowance of $30,205 to compensate her for “reasonable additional hours of work” but within months of starting her job,a disconnect emerged between what Rugg and Ryan considered reasonable.
An already strained relationship fractured in November last year,shortly before the Victorian election,at a time when Ryan was frustrated by difficulties of the “teal” movement to have an impact at the state political level.
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On November 22,Rugg dismayed her boss by catching a flight home from Canberra to Melbourne shortly after testing positive to COVID-19. “I wish you’d let me know you were considering doing that,” parliament’s most demonstrably COVID-cautious MP told her then-staffer.
Rugg was effectively sacked by Ryan a month later,on December 23,with Ryan telling her that the termination would take effect on January 31 this year.
A week before her employment was due to formally end,Rugg initiated legal proceedings in the Federal Court.
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