Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to mislead!
Fairfax’s Stephanie Peatling worries senators have been too tough on Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, Wednesday:
Arms crossed, jaw set and stare steely, the former cop (Queensland senator Barry O’Sullivan) would lean behind the seat of Coalition colleague Linda Reynolds to confer with Senator Macdonald … The senators came to politics as veterans of the state’s colourful legal and police world, two fraternities … that know a thing or two about the treatment of witnesses.
Triggs would have likely preferred the kid gloves treatment. The Australian’s Jared Owens reports, yesterday:
Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has admitted she misled parliament after her attempts to blame journalists for manufacturing quotes and citing her out of context were yesterday disproved by an audio recording. The error has plunged the human rights advocate into a fresh controversy, leaving her facing accusations her testimony was an “apparent deception”.
Triggs, appearing before the aforementioned committee, Tuesday:
This is an extracted article. It’s written by a journalist and the comments were taken out of context.
Never mind. Triggs responding to The Australian, yesterday:
I had no intention of questioning The Saturday Paper’s journalistic integrity. I have today written to the committee to clarify my statement.
The commissioner is no stranger to controversy. The Australian’s Chris Kenny, February 27 last year:
The conduct of Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has again been called into question amid revelations she signalled she would consider resigning the post if her reputation could be protected and she could secure alternative employment. Evidence that Professor Triggs sent indirect signals to Attorney-General George Brandis just last month comes after a week of controversy in which she claimed to have been shocked by suggestions from the government that she might resign — even though it was revealed she instigated the meeting about her standing.
Senator Barry O’Sullivan questioning Triggs’s timing of an inquiry into children in detention, November 20, 2014:
You left it until a change of government and the number had reduced to less than half, and not only on that parameter, on so many other parameters where the government was clearly working through the log of claims. The people who had been left over from the 50,000 are reducing on the way, and you decide to leave it until February 2014 to commence an inquiry?
Triggs responds, November 20, 2014:
We had an inquiry by the Human Rights Commission when children were first held in detention. That inquiry was entitled The Last Resort in 2004. It had been our plan … that we would hold a new inquiry to coincide with the 10-year anniversary …
Sev Ozdowski, Australian Human Rights Commissioner (2000-05), February 4, 2014:
Certainly the repetition of my inquiry is the highest form of flattery but timing is very odd. When the boats were arriving in large numbers and Labor was at its peak of cruelty towards the boat arrivals AHRC almost did not see the problem and the newly appointed Children Rights Commissioner was proclaiming that her jurisdiction is limited to domestic matters.