Cartoon haters out of the race for race discrimination commissioner’s job

The government will today begin the process of recruiting a replacement for the Race Discrimination Commissioner.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane. Picture: Hollie Adams

The federal government will today begin the process of recruiting a replacement for Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane but candidates intent on soliciting complaints against cartoonists need not apply.

Advertisements seeking expressions of interest in the job will begin appearing today but ­Attorney-General Christian Porter has already given a clear indication about the qualities he expects in the new commissioner.

The advertisement says the ­duties of the Race Discrimination Commissioner include promoting understanding, tolerance and friendship among racial and ethnic groups.

The selection process will proceed in accordance with the Public Service Commission’s merit and transparency guidelines.

In February, soon after he took office, Mr Porter was asked about the conduct of the commission in pursuing The Australian’s late cartoonist Bill Leak under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

Mr Porter said then he considered it a radical interpretation of the commission’s powers for any of its members to solicit complaints against individuals.

He made it clear that Dr Soutphommasane, who leaves in ­August, would be replaced with someone who has “an understanding and empathy not merely for minority groups but for middle Australian values”.

The expiry of Dr Soutphommasane’s five-year term gives Mr Porter an opportunity to complete the overhaul of the commission that began in June last year, three months after Leak’s death, when Ros Croucher replaced Gillian Triggs as commission president.

Professor Croucher, who has avoided controversy since taking office, was appointed for seven years and the government proposes to appoint the next commissioner for “up to seven years”.

This means the winner of next year’s federal election might be unable in its first term to appoint its own candidates to the two jobs at the commission that have been the focus of controversy.

When Professor Croucher replaced Professor Triggs, former Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski said the new president faced “a recovery job”.

A report last year by parliament’s joint committee on human rights found that Dr Soutphommasane’s remarks about Leak’s 2016 cartoon “could be perceived by some as solicitation”.

The committee recommended changes to avoid the risk of ­“potential damage to public confidence in” the Australian Human Rights Commission.

After public statements about the cartoon by Dr Soutphommasane, a complaint was sent to commission under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act alleging that the complainant felt offended, insulted, humiliated and intimidated.

The cartoon had portrayed the plight of an Aboriginal child being returned by an Aboriginal policeman to a delinquent father.

The complaint was eventually dropped but Leak’s supporters ­believe the stress caused by the incident was one of the factors ­behind his fatal heart attack on March 10 last year.

One month later, on April 12, Dr Soutphommasane told a public meeting in Sydney he had no regrets about anything he had said about the Leak cartoon.

Despite the findings of the joint parliamentary committee, he ­believed his remarks had been wrongly characterised as urging people to complain when all he was doing was responding to public and media inquiries.