How the Human Rights Commission went to war with itself

Six days. That’s how long it took for the Australian Human Rights Commission to make its first statement about Hamas’ October 7 assault on Israel that killed 1200 people and took 250 hostages. It said human rights must be upheld as the situation in the Middle East worsened. But it didn’t mention antisemitism, and it didn’t mention Hamas.

It was a glaring omission and telling delay for many Jewish Australians, the first in a string of incidents that would form a firm view in their mind: the nation’s peak human rights body was not defending them against rising antisemitism.

But it’s not just Jewish Australians who feel the commission let them down. With 41,000 Gazans killed, some frustrated employees who support the Palestinian cause pushed it to take a stronger stance on the war, to no avail, and ultimately resigned.

Former Australian Human Rights Commission president Rosalind Croucher during a Senate estimates hearing in May.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Their exodus exposed the fault lines the human rights body has been forced to straddle as the Middle Eastern war reverberates across society. The commission conciliates racial discrimination complaints while campaigning against racism; it’s an independent statutory body operating in an inevitably political space; it’s a workplace that attracts passionate staff while having strict public service codes of conduct.

Interrogated over hours of senate estimates sessions and inquiries, the AHRC has maintained it is doing the job it is supposed to. “We are not the adjudicator of situations internationally,” former president Rosalind Croucher said at her final grilling.

“The principal focus of our mandate is the impact on our communities in Australia, all of whom, like Holocaust survivors and displaced Palestinian survivors, are our concern ... The expectations of the commission are very high, but our statutory mandate is clear.”

But a year later, the commission stands battered by the war and its domestic fallout. Its new president, Hugh de Kretser, quickly found himself on the receiving end of outrage as the Coalition pursued it on behalf of the Jewish community, and the Greens took up the cause of former pro-Palestinian employees. At the same time, the government’s announcement of two new special envoys – one to combat antisemitism, the other Islamophobia – only weakens its remit.

The new envoy to combat antisemitism, Jillian Segal, has been damning. “There is a complete lack of confidence in the AHRC by the Jewish community that will take some time to be restored, if it can be restored,” she told a senate inquiry last month.

Special envoy on antisemitism Jillian Segal.Credit: Kate Geraghty

There was a litany of circumstances where the commission failed, according to Segal, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry and Coalition politicians. Beyond the omissions in early public statements, an anti-racism campaign email in November 2023 cited genocide in Gaza but made no reference to Jews or their trauma. The commission had not adopted a definition of antisemitism. Liberal MP Julian Leeser said it had gone AWOL. “If an institution charged with protecting Australians from racism and hate is not fulfilling its mandate, then Australians should question why it exists,” he wrote.

Then there were problems with contracts. The commission hired Hue Consulting for its anti-racism campaign; News Corp reported Hue’s co-founder helped share doxxed details of 600 Jewish creatives from a leaked private WhatsApp group. The commission featured former Socceroos star Craig Foster in its anti-racism campaign, and comedian Nazeem Hussain in the lineup for one of its events – both vocal supporters of Palestine.

Several of its staff caused alarm; The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, in a Senate submission, said the staff had a “virulent public record of hostility towards Israel” and were using their status “to promote a selectively distorted and disproportionate representation” of the conflict. Employees’ private social media posts were labelled antisemitic, racist and inflammatory.

Coalition Senator Sarah Henderson called the social media conduct “disgraceful”; Linda Reynolds said the commission had been “caught very flat-footed and somewhat impotent”.

The commission responded by suspending its contract with Hue, and apologised for the controversial email, which it took down. But it vigorously defended its record on antisemitism, pointing to at least 15 public statements from the past year.

De Kretser, appearing in his first senate inquiry last month, acknowledged the Jewish community’s feelings were “genuinely held” and that the AHRC condemned the “brutal violence” of October 7. “It’s a matter that concerns us, that that message ... has not been received in a way that has built confidence in the Jewish community,” he said.

New president of the Australian Human Rights Commission Hugh de Kretser.Credit: Justin McManus

Segal said she believed the commission was trying to win back support. “That is to be commended,” she said. “But winning back trust is a long-term objective and will take time.”

Each perceived concession to pro-Israel lobbyists, however, triggered disquiet among employees who wanted the commission to take a stronger stance against what they saw as Israel’s human rights abuses.

Twenty-four of them penned an anonymous letter. Released to The Guardian, it said the commission had failed “to fulfil its mandate as an accredited national human rights institution in regard to Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity”. They also thought its statements since October 7 were too soft.

Sara Saleh believes she was singled out. Credit: Nick Moir

One of those disillusioned staffers was Sara Saleh, a Palestinian poet. “Staff argued we had obligations under the genocide convention. Instead, they were getting a heavy politicisation and what they perceived as senior management responding to requests of the lobby,” she said.

Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi pressed the commission on alleged “troubling treatment of staff” in the Senate. She said they had been disciplined for signing petitions for a ceasefire; wearing a keffiyeh; using the phrase “from the river to the sea”; or citing United Nations press releases in personal social media posts.

“This, to me, seems like a pretty toxic and silencing culture, and one that sits totally at odds with what the Human Rights Commission is about,” Faruqi said. This was strongly disputed by the commission, which pointed to the Australian Public Service code of conduct.

Saleh believes she was personally singled out, and her duties reduced, “to avoid potential for scandal, knowing I’m a Palestinian in the public sphere”. The scandal came anyway. Her social media posts – including one that shared a Palestinian journalist’s post saying October 7 should make sense in light of Israel’s psychopathy – were reported by News Corp, and the commission was slammed.

Saleh doesn’t deny making the posts, although she argues there was a double standard: since the commission said the overseas war had nothing to do with her job, she should have been allowed to post on it. The AHRC said Saleh’s case was a private staffing matter, although it reminded all staff of their social media obligations.

Along with seven others, Saleh resigned, saying the saga showed cracks in the commission. “Instead of utilising the skill and talent of people with networks and connections to communities, who care about these issues and the commission, they came from a place of fear and tried to silence and suppress that … That’s part of why eight people left: on its spinelessness.

“I think we need to reflect. What does it mean for our credibility when we are not able to speak out?”

Former race discrimination commissioner Tim Soutphommasane said it exposed clear tensions. Staff were, as expected, people deeply committed to human rights. But they were also public servants.

“Australians of different backgrounds must reasonably be able to trust that they will be treated fairly if they turn to the AHRC for assistance or redress. If staff campaign on issues of the day, it can undermine the ability of the AHRC to serve all Australians,” he said.

“The AHRC, at the end of the day, is not Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch ... It’s sad that some are content to portray that as some monstrous betrayal of human rights.”

This is one of the commission’s binds: it’s both a campaigner and handler of complaints. De Kretser said there were protocols to separate those two functions and ensure impartiality. He emphasised in estimates that the Jewish community retained faith in the complaints processes. “This is critical to me,” he said. But the lack of confidence in the commission more broadly was “of deep concern”.

Historian Jon Piccini, however, points out the commission has been criticised from left and right since its inception. “It is a body that has never quite been able to satisfy anyone,” he said.

“I don’t think the question here is whether minorities will ‘lose faith’ in it. The Jewish community has often worked closely with the commission on hate speech and antisemitism, and I imagine they will do so again.”

Nor has former commissioner Chris Sidoti been troubled by the debate. “I would look back over the last year as indicating that inevitably there are tensions when issues as serious as this arise internationally. But, so far, we have been handling them pretty well,” he said.

However, he said criticism needed to be taken seriously. “An accountable institution listens to what is being said and asks itself: Is the criticism justified? To what extent? And what can be done about it?”

De Kretser, having been asked versions of those questions in estimates, said the commission was consulting Jewish, Muslim and other community organisations about how to best deliver on its mandate. Social cohesion was fragmenting, he said, “and the Australian Human Rights Commission has a critical role to play.”

But the government’s choice to appoint specific antisemitism and Islamophobia envoys has further confused that role, said Justine Nolan, director of the Australian Human Rights Institute at UNSW.

“What we’re doing at the moment is decoupling both antisemitism and Islamophobia from racism. But they’re both parts of racism. And the role of the AHRC is a clear mandate for anti-racism,” she said.

“The more we undermine that by taking its work away from it, the more we undermine its role in society.”

Nolan defended the view that a human rights commission should be a loud voice that asserts its independence and speaks up when there are problems. As a government-funded body, she said there would always be tensions in doing so.

“But that’s its role: to tread that line. In the past it’s taken very strong stances: look at refugee issues and children in detention,” she said. “It’s not a question about taking up an opinion. Human rights are objective, international standards.”

Piccini, however, sees them as more fluid. “The commission has always been politicised because human rights itself is a politicised term. We like to think it’s normative, and above debate, but the phrase ‘human rights’ has as many meanings as the number of people who use it,” he said.

“In the end, the commission is subject to the same unclarity of meaning as the idea of human rights itself. These meanings are never settled, but always in flux.”

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