Gillian Triggs hires top silk in 18C university case

The cost to taxpayers of an 18C ­racial hatred case involving Facebook posts by uni students is escalating.

The cost to taxpayers of an 18C ­racial hatred case involving Facebook posts by university students barred from an indigenous-only computer room is escalating, with the Human Rights Commission briefing an external silk.

The Queensland University of Technology students — accused under the controversial section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act by indigenous staffer Cindy Prior, who told them to leave the campus computer room because they are white — blame the commission for failing to notify them for at least 14 months, when it was too late to resolve the case.

That led to the students, who had posted on Facebook that they had been kicked out of the comput­er room and that racial segregation was being encouraged at their university, being forced to defend themselves in the Federal Circuit Court.

Judge Michael Jarrett is yet to rule on their bid to have the racial vilification case dismissed.

Two students, Jackson Powell and Calum Thwaites, who accuse the commission of “recklessly” breaching their human rights in the row stemming from a $250,000 damages claim brought by Ms Prior, were joined in their complaint yesterday by a third student, Alex Wood.

The total legal bills for the university and other parties are estim­ated to be nearing $1 million.

They allege the commission has treated them with “flagrant ­indifference” because they are “white Anglo-Saxon heterosexual citizens who maintain a male ­gender identity” and have no criminal rec­ord, no outspoken political opinions and no record of particip­ation in trade unions or ­religious sects.

Commission president Gillian Triggs advised that she had “delegated my powers in relation to these complaints to Mr Angus Stewart SC”, a Sydney silk, to inquire into whether “acts or practices of the commission were ­inconsistent with or contrary to (the students’) human rights”.

Ms Prior has been unable to work for 2½ years and wants $250,000 from QUT and the stud­ents. The students have insisted their posts were innocuous, harmless and a legitimate ­expression of their freedom of speech.

In a letter to Professor Triggs yesterday, the lawyer for Mr Wood, Michael Henry, stated: “Examining complaints against the commission is your responsib­ility and your responsibility alone. We had sincerely hoped that some leadership would be shown by you on this issue and that the commission would have investigated this deeply regrettable incident of its own initiative.”

Mr Henry said it was regrettable that a “further round of combative and adversarial litig­ation” would be unavoidable.

He said that, apart from the pressure on the young men, Ms Prior had been let down, humil­iated and made a focal point of mass community outrage ­because “until very recently nobody ever had the moral courage to ­actually tell Ms Prior that her conduct and sense of grievance with (the stud­ents) was patently unreasonable and totally disproportionate”.

“She is facing the very real risk of losing everything she has; all in circumstances where the entire matter could have been easily ­resolved during the process the commission was duty bound by statute to undertake,’’ he said.