No apology from Gillian Triggs despite 18C case failings

HRC president Gillian Triggs has refused to apologise to Queensland University of Technology students.

HRC President Gillian Triggs. Picture: Kym Smith

Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs has refused to apologise to Queensland University of Technology students, despite admitting they “suffered” as a result of failures in the commission’s complaint handling process.

The commission is calling for legislative changes to prevent a repeat of its failure to notify the students for more than 14 months that they had been ­accused of racial hatred.

Giving evidence at a parliamentary inquiry in Canberra yesterday, Professor Triggs refused to acknowledge that the commission could have done anything differently, other than with the benefit of hindsight, and repeatedly refused to apologise.

“With the benefit of hindsight and knowing that all the efforts at negotiations failed ... then of course we’d have moved earlier, but nobody does — that’s not the real world,” she said.

Asked by Liberal senator James Paterson whether she had made efforts to contact the students and apologise to them, Professor Triggs indicated she saw no need to do so. “I don’t believe that we owe an apology,” she said. “It’s true, the students have suffered from this, and that matters to the commission, we care about human rights, and many of your questions are premised on that notion and I fully support you in asking these questions, but I cannot concede when I look back at the file and look at each step of that file, I cannot concede that the commission did anything that was wrong.”

She took on notice a request to produce documents that the commission has been refusing to release to The Australian’s Hedley Thomas, who requested them under Freedom of Information laws.

The commission continues to blame the university for not playing its part in contacting the students, despite taking no steps to contact them itself.

The allegations arose after Cindy Prior, an administration ­officer at QUT’s Oodgeroo Unit, stopped three students from working in the computer lab in May 2013 after asking “whether they were indigenous”.

Several students then made posts on the Facebook page “QUT Stalker Space”. “Just got kicked out of the unsigned indigenous computer room. QUT (is) stopping segregation with segregation,” wrote Alex Wood.

Another student, Jackson Powell, wrote on the Facebook page: “I wonder where the white ­supremacist computer lab is.”

Another post, “ITT niggers”, was attributed to stud­ent Calum Thwaites, who was found by the Federal Circuit court to have had nothing to do with the post.

The students, along with four others, were accused of racial vilification in a case Ms Prior took to the commission. She then sued for $250,000 in the Federal Circuit Court under section 18C of the ­Racial Discrimination Act.

Ms Prior’s complaint was lodged in May 2014, but the commission did not contact any of the students until July 2015, leaving it to QUT to make contact days before an unsuccessful conciliation with the students and Ms Prior.

Professor Triggs maintained the commission failed to contact the students because it initially saw the dispute as between Ms Prior and the university. “With the benefit of hindsight, I wish we had pushed the university and Ms Prior sooner and earlier,” she said.

Pressed again on whether she would apologise, she said the commission would take its “own counsel” on dealing with and talking to the students. “It may be something that we would usefully do when this inquiry is over,” she said. “I think it would be appropriate for us to reach out to them and to talk to them. I don’t off the cuff want to say more than that.”