Gillian Triggs to receive ‘free speech prize’

Bill Leak’s son Johannes says he is “disgusted” at news a civil liberties group is awarding Gillian Triggs a “free speech prize”.

Liberty Victoria praised Professor Triggs for “her fearless work in pursuit of people’s rights. Picture: Kym Smith.

Outgoing Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs, who defended widely condemned 18C actions against Queensland university students and the late cartoonist Bill Leak, is to receive a “free speech prize” from a civil liberties group.

Liberty Victoria has bestowed Professor Triggs with its Voltaire Award for “her courageous stand on people’s rights, especially free speech.”

News of the award drew angry comment from Bill Leak’s son Johannes and Tony Abbott, who claimed Professor Triggs was the “absolute arch enemy of free speech in this country”.

In July Professor Triggs will share the stage at a gala award function in Melbourne with Georgie Stone, Liberty Victoria’s first recipient of its Young Voltaire Award for becoming, at age 10, “the youngest person in Australia to be granted permission by a court to take hormone blockers, the first stage of medical treatment for transgender children.”

Professor Triggs has engaged in a long-running ideological war with the Coalition, with Attorney-General George Brandis and Immigration Minister Peter Dutton, among other ministers, calling for her resignation over her attacks on the government’s offshore asylum-seeker detention policy on Manus Island and Nauru.

Attorney-General George Brandis has called for Triggs’ resignation. Picture: Kym Smith

In a statement, Liberty Victoria praised Ms Triggs for “her fearless work in pursuit of people’s rights, and her courage and persistence under extraordinary pressure.”

Liberty Victoria heralded Professor Triggs’ comment that “it is important that we teach our children to be strong and to speak out for the values that are important to them. At the same time, it is important that we have legal protections in place where people are silenced by hate speech or don’t have the power to speak back.”

Johannes Leak. Picture: Kym Smith

Leak ‘baffled, disgusted’

On Sky TV tonight Bill Leak’s son Johannes said he was “baffled and disgusted” at the award.

“I got the call from my stepmum, who delivered the news in tears. She had to pull over the car when she heard it first on the radio so you can imagine how it’s made everybody feel,” he said.

“But I don’t lose sight of the fact that at the end of the day it’s an irrelevant organisation awarding a prize to the head of a completely unnecessary outfit, but a dangerous one, and everything about this is back-to-front.

“You’ve got somebody being heralded as a champion of free speech: nobody’s done more over the last few years to quash freedom of speech in this country (than Professor Triggs) and my father wore it along with the QUT students and we all know what happened.”

Mr Leak said those who awarded the prize “knew exactly when they did this how this would make us feel and how this would send a message to us”.

“It just goes to show how utterly backwards their idea, their whole notion of what free speech actually is.”

.@rowandean believes Gillian Triggs should reject her award for freedom of speech after the way she treated Bill Leak. #TheBoltReport pic.twitter.com/QgVycfpWc5

— The Bolt Report (@theboltreport) May 3, 2017

Speaking on Sydney radio station 2GB, Mr Abbott said of Professor Triggs: “She’s been the enemy of free speech, the absolute arch enemy of free speech in this country and I can only assume that someone with a warped sense of humour has come up with this award.”

“It cannot be taken seriously, anything that couples the name of Gillian Triggs and free speech, simple as that,” the former Prime Minister said.

“She’s paid half a million bucks a year to trample on people’s free speech so I think it’s a joke that this award is going to her.”

In March, Professor Triggs conceded she did receive a response from the legal team representing Leak, then a cartoonist on The Australian, after a complaint was made against him under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The concession came after she initially told a Senate hearing the commission had never received a defence from Leak’s lawyers under section 18D of the act.

Professor Triggs had told the Senate committee that she would have immediately dismissed complaints against the cartoon had Leak’s legal team responded. It emerged Leak’s lawyers had responded and flagged a defence of fair comment under 18D.

Also in March, Professor Triggs all but apologised to the students affected by the high-profile Queensland University of Technology racial hatred case, saying her organisation “deeply regrets the anxiety, reputational damage and costs” they experienced under its “lengthy processes”.

In October, Professor Triggs retracted her claim that she was misquoted and “taken out of context” in an interview with The Saturday Paper that resulted in her misleading a Senate committee.

“Triggs accused this newspaper of the greatest editorial breach — the fabrication of a quote,” The Saturday Paper said in an editorial at the time. Professor Triggs term expires at the end of next month.

Liberty Victoria, officially known today as the Victorian Council for Civil Liberties, and previously as the Australian Council for Civil Liberties, was established in Melbourne in 1936 by prominent citizens from areas including law, art, writing and academia.

EXCLUSIVE: Johannes Leak on #pmlive re GILLIAN TRIGGS getting a 'Free Speech' award. pic.twitter.com/ZY4A2fGUi0

— Paul Murray LIVE (@pm_live) May 3, 2017