Two wrongs make a case for human rights gone rogue

Former Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski has has confirmed what many have long suspected about the AHRC.

Former Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski.

Former Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski has just done one more service for the nation: he has confirmed what many have long suspected about the Australian Human Rights Commission.

His submission to the parliamentary inquiry into section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act has provided an insight into an organisation that is stumbling from one disaster to another.

But its problems are just beginning. With any luck, Ozdowski’s accusations should provide a compelling agenda for next year’s public hearings on 18C.

His submission makes the shocking accusation that the complaint-handling processes at the commission “have always been biased towards the person making the complaint”.

Just as worrying is his accusation that when he was at the commission he learned of allegations that commission officers were proposing to drum up complaints in certain areas in order to create a case for new regulations.

These matters need to be examined by the parliamentary committee that is running the 18C inquiry. If true, it will be difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Human Rights Commission has gone rogue.

If it has adopted an approach to its work that ignores the concept of procedural fairness and favours plaintiffs it has become an intolerable threat to one of the most fundamental human rights. Fair treatment at the hands of government agencies is not negotiable.

If it is also skewing its work to drive its own agenda, it is beyond redemption.

Abolition would be the only logical remedy for the commission, and dismissal would be the remedy for any officers who are found to have engaged in this sort of conduct.

Ozdowski left the commission in 2005 but his accusations cannot be dismissed as something that is merely of historical interest. Consider two recent events:

● In August, Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane considered it appropriate to drum up complaints about a cartoon in this newspaper by Bill Leak. After waiting two months, for whatever reason, the commission notified Leak of a complaint, subsequently abandoned.

● There are two ways of describing the commission’s handling of this year’s QUT case: one is pro-plaintiff, the other is incompetent. It accepted a complaint against university students that was later found to be baseless. It kept them in the dark for years and eventually gave them minimal notice of conciliation proceedings.

Those incidents are worrying enough. But Ozdowski’s submission raises the prospect that this sort of conduct reflects a culture that has run off the rails.

“The complaint-handling procedures at the AHRC, and its predecessor ... have always been biased towards the person making a complaint with the intent being to deliver ‘proper’ educational outcomes for broader society,” his submission says.

“While Human Rights Commissioner I was particularly concerned about allegations of officers proposing to solicit a particular type of complaint in order to advance regulatory change,” he writes. Ozdowski has also blown the whistle on how the risk of reputational damage has enabled the commission’s complaint-handling process to be used for what some would describe as extortion.

“This puts pressure on respondents to enter any kind of deal proposed by the AHRC mediators in order to avoid the matter reaching the public domain and can therefore lead to what some may consider extortion of money from people against whom a potentially baseless complaint has been made,” he writes.

The next public hearing of this inquiry is on January 30.

The legal affairs section resumes publication after the summer break on January 20.