Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs has been attacked in a Senate estimates committee hearing in Canberra this morning over the recently released report into children in detention.
A series of criticisms about Triggs’ impartiality emerged immediately following the release of the report and were repeated in the hearing this morning.
Triggs was questioned about her decision-making processes for the report, her potential partisanship in releasing the report, and was also accused of “doing nothing” about children in detention prior to the report, by committee chairman Ian McDonald.
The committee also heard evidence about Attorney-General George Brandis’ office asking for Triggs’ resignation over the report.
Triggs said she was asked by Brandis’s office to resign approximately a month ago.
“He (the secretary) said he’d been asked to deliver the message from the attorney that he required my resignation. I said what is the reason for this request? I believe he had no details for the basis for it,” Triggs said.
“I gave him my answer. I have a five year statutory position … which is designed to avoid political interference in the exercise of my tasks.”
Triggs said Brandis’s office even offered her a new position as incentive to step down.
“It was definitely said to me that an offer would be made for me to provide work for the government in areas of my expertise in international law.”
“It was the first time in my career that anyone has ever asked for my resignation.”
Triggs thought the offer of another position as a “basis for motivation” was “disgraceful” behaviour on the part of the Attorney General.
The Attorney General also gave evidence, saying he had “lost confidence in Professor Triggs as the head of the Human Rights Commission”.
He said he questioned her partiality and believed she made a “catastrophic error of judgment” in the recent report. He said this has led him to decide that Triggs should reconsider her position as president of the commission.
When chairman McDonald suggested Triggs had “done nothing” about children in detention prior to this report, she responded: “That is a profound mis-statement.”
Greens Senator Penny Wright then called McDonald’s chairmanship into question, saying he was the one threatening impartiality by attacking Triggs.
ALP Senator Penny Wong echoed this sentiment, saying McDonald was turning the hearing to a “circus”.
While all of this was going on, Liberal Senator Barry O’Sullivan said to the room: “I thought you might like to hear a man’s voice”.
Meanwhile, chairman McDonald admitted he has not read the Human Rights Commission’s report on children in detention.
The issue has now been raised in Question Time. Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has asked the prime minister if he had any knowledge of the Attorney General offering Triggs an alternative position in return for her resignation.
“Was the prime minister or his office aware that the resignation of the president of the Human Rights Commission was being sought on the authority of the attorney-general and was the prime minister or his office aware that a specific role was being offered to the president of the Human Rights Commission on the condition that she resign?”
Abbott replied: “It is true that the government has lost confidence in the president of the Human Rights Commission.”
He then repeated his claims that Triggs authored the report on children in detention as a weapon against his government.
“It’s absolutely crystal clear this inquiry by the president of the Human Rights Commission is a political stitch-up,” he said.
More to come.