Gillian Triggs defends Human Rights Commission’s handling of lengthy case

HUMAN Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has defended her organisation’s handling of a critical case saying they tried “in good faith” to conciliate the matter.

HUMAN Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has defended the organisation’s handling of a complaint that lasted 14 months after coming under fire from Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and then ABC’s 7.30 program.

The case in question was thrown out on Friday after Federal Circuit Court judge Michael ­Jarrett ruled three Queensland University of Technology students had no case to ­answer in response to a $250,000 compensation claim by indigenous staffer Cindy Prior over comments they made in May 2013.

ABC 7.30 host Leigh Sales grilled Ms Triggs on why the case, which was criticised for “lacking substance”, was not thrown out sooner.

Ms Triggs hit back, saying the AHRC had tried “in good faith” to conciliate the matter.

“We couldn’t make a judgment about what a court might do. Our role is not a court,” she said.

“We are there to stop matters going to the court. We have about 20,000 complaints a year, or matters a year. And we, our job is to investigate and conciliate them and that’s why we come back to the threshold point.”

Gillian Triggs, President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, has hit back after an attack by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. Picture: Kym Smi

Sales, who said Ms Triggs’ role was partly to stop matters going to court, quizzed the president on why she would even bother with conciliation and not dismiss the complaint as a waste of time.

Ms Triggs said some complaints were indeed “vexatious”, but countered this particular complaint had “a level of substance”.

“The complaints were ones that attracted a certain measure of concern about the nature of the comments that were made. I won’t repeat the language but it was worrying and troubling,” she said.
“The court came to a different view and we respect the view of the court.”

Sales became increasingly frustrated throughout the interview, with the two seeming to disagree on the role of the Human Rights Commission.

“If your job is to try to prevent things from ending up in court, let me ask again why is it not the responsibility of the Human Rights Commission to make an assessment that this is not going to be successful in court, so why are we wasting time about whether people can agree or disagree or whatever?” Sales asked.

Ms Triggs said the primary function was to achieve conciliation.

The interview was largely met with support for Triggs with many taking to Twitter to comment that Sales’s line of questioning was tedious.

Many criticised the host for not understanding how the AHRC works.

Quietly dignified and gracious @GillianTriggs countering @leighsales's tedious questioning. #abc730 #auspol

— Lee-Anne Walker (@Lee_AnneWalker) November 7, 2016

@leighsales just doesn't get that the HRC is not a court. Not very intelligent and poor line of questioning IMO. Completely off mark #abc730

— JosephK (@JosephK_OK) November 7, 2016

@abc730 Instead of doggedly hard lining against Prof Triggs, try listening to her position, Leigh Sales

— Victor Marsh (@MarshDr) November 7, 2016

But not everyone was in Triggs’s corner.

Gillian Triggs no ability to respond to questions from Leigh Sales with any credibility

— Anne Murphy (@echucanne) November 7, 2016

Earlier this morning Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull took aim at the Human Rights Commission for taking too long to investigate complaints under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act

In an interview with ABC radio, Mr Turnbull said Cabinet was considering a parliamentary committee to review the language in section 18C of racial discrimination laws.

Mr Turnbull also said the Human Rights Commission had “done a great deal of harm to its credibility” by bringing a case against three Queensland students.

“The Human Rights Commission should ... meet and it should very soberly and carefully reflect on whether in their conduct of the administration of the Act they have actually been undermining respect for it,” he said.

“This was not a case that was determined on the margin, it was not a close case, it was not a well argued case that fell down on the balance of probabilities.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is not impressed with the Human Rights Commission. Picture: Kym Smith

Originally published as Gillian Triggs defends Human Rights Commission’s handling of lengthy case