Gillian Triggs: a case of she-said, she-said as she defends HRC

In the face of attacks, won't somebody think of the poor Human Rights Commission?

They’re on to us! The Sydney Morning Herald buys into Gillian Triggs’s defence of her handling of the QUT case (and a convenient bogeyman), the Herald website, Monday:

Professor Triggs said the commission had no power to instigate court proceedings and revealed she had been urging the government to introduce a higher threshold before the commission was obliged to investigate hate speech complaints … Professor Triggs argued the campaign is being orchestrated by News Corp and politicians “who have deliberately misunderstood the law”.

What was that about misunderstanding the law? The Australian’s Hedley Thomas reports, September 1:

A Freedom of Information disclosure to students accused of ­racism shows the Human Rights Commission did not follow its own guidelines before the complaint of Cindy Prior advanced to the Federal Circuit Court.

Speaking of law, here’s Triggs explaining why she accepted that 18C case against QUT students. ABC TV’s 7.30, Monday:

Perhaps I can first explain that the commission is bound to accept any complaint that is in writing that al­leges a breach of the discrimination law. So the first obligation is to accept the complaint and then to investigate it and conciliate it.

Section 20 of the Australian Human Rights Act 1986:

(2) The Commission may decide not to inquire into an act or practice, or, if the Commission has commenced to inquire into an act or practice, may decide not to continue to inquire into the act or practice … (where) the Commission is of the opinion that the complaint is frivolous, vexatious, mis­conceived or lacking in substance.

Conciliation is difficult if both sides aren’t involved. The Australian with more on the QUT case, April 18:

A group of Queensland university students were not told about a racial discrimination case against them for more than a year at the behest of the woman making the complaint. Documents filed in the Federal Court indicate neither the Australian Human Rights Commission nor the Queensland University of Technology notified the students …

Presumably Queensland university students are all part of the vast conspiracy. The Australian, April 30:

Two students accused the Human Rights Commission yesterday of “recklessly” breaching their human rights in a row stemming from a $250,000 damages claim brought by a worker who barred white students from a room at the Queensland University of Technology.

Triggs, continuing, ABC 7.30:

I think this one was difficult because the parties took different points of view. There were a number of students that had said different things and so the issues in relation to each of them was different … It was quite a long matter. Some students had gone away on holidays, were difficult to connect and so on. So that was why it took much longer than usual.

One of the accused QUT students, Calum Thwaites, talks to The Australian’s Thomas about his case, yesterday:

They never had any contact with us. I never received one piece of correspondence from the commission. There is absolutely no truth in what she said about that last night on 7.30 and to Fairfax Media.

The worst museum in the world? Headline, Sydney Morning Herald website, yesterday:

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