Gillian Triggs has ‘fair’ template to follow for her upcoming memoir

Kindred spirits? Gillian Triggs (left), Christine Nixon and (right) Nixon's autobiography.

What next for Gillian Triggs, the outgoing president of the Australian Human Rights Commission?

Penning her memoirs, by the looks of it. In December 2016 the chief executive of Melbourne University Publishing, Louise Adler, confirmed she had discussed this with Triggs.

“I hope that we are able to persuade her on her rich and ­varied career,” Adler said. A speech given by Triggs last week at Melbourne Town Hall sets the tone for what we can expect in this book.

“I am coming to the view that they have been able to say things about me, and attack me, in a way that never would have happened to a man. And I am sorry to say that, but it’s true,’’ said Triggs, standing in the venue where the great Dame Nellie Melba, one of Australia’s most famous divas, had once performed.

Objective introspection was never Triggs’s strongest trait, and presumably any autobiography would be a combination of self-promotion and tales of her battles, whether real or imagined, against her detractors. Still, she’s entitled to earn a quid to supplement her meagre pension, and she’ll be feted by many an inner-city book shop where hushed audiences will hear of her suffering.

Enjoyable as writing about herself would be, Triggs could save herself much time and effort by using the template of a kindred spirit, former Victoria Police chief commissioner Christine Nixon. Her ironically-titled ‘Fair Cop’, released in 2011, was, wrote then Melbourne-based The Australian Associate Editor Cameron Stewart, “an extraordinary and unseemly spray even by the self-serving standards of many autobiographies.”

Like Triggs, Nixon was something of a media darling because of her enthusiasm for progressive causes, particularly in effecting so-called culture change in Victoria Police. Her reputation was damaged in 2008, when it was revealed she had breached the force’s gift policy by accepting an all-expenses paid international junket worth tens of thousands of dollars. Despite clear evidence that Qantas had sent the invitation to her in the first instance, Nixon had disingenuously claimed that the offer was made to her husband, a former airline executive.

Nixon cemented this reputation for evasiveness during the Royal Commission into the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires. Asked about her reasons for leaving the emergency management centre as the disaster intensified, Nixon did not disclose she had dined with friends that evening at an upmarket pub. Recalled to give evidence after her engagement became known, a highly agitated and defensive Nixon denied accusations she had intentionally misled the commission.

Sound familiar? Let’s begin with abrogation of responsibility. At the time of Triggs’s appointment in July 2012, Labor was in government and there were nearly 2000 children in immigration detention. The AHRC’s inquiry into the welfare of those children did not begin until 18 months later – after the election of the Abbott Government. As with Nixon, Triggs’s credibility was lost when asked to account for her non-action. No, she told a Senate committee when asked to explain the delay, she’d never discussed such an inquiry with government ministers while Labor was in power. Yes, she later admitted, she’d actually spoken with two Labor immigration ministers.

As with Nixon, who even publicly criticised her own lawyers, Triggs blamed others for her woeful performance in giving evidence. Her interview with journalist Ramona Koval of The Saturday Paper in April 2016 was audacious and pompous in the extreme. “One can be astonished at the very simplistic level at which I need to speak’’, declared a haughty Triggs, “Our parliamentarians are usually seriously ill-informed and uneducated.’’ Later challenged about these remarks, she misled the Senate committee by claiming that quotations attributed to her were “inaccurate’’ and “taken out of context’’. Tellingly, the paper’s sympathetic portrayal of Triggs did not stop her from turning on the journalist and sub-editor concerned. Only upon learning the paper had an audio recording of the interview did Triggs “clarify” that the article was accurate.

Nixon, in her autobiography (launched by then Prime Minister Julia Gillard), made only the briefest acknowledgment of what she termed her “mistakes’’. That was as far she got with self-reflection. The rest was largely a denunciation of those she believed had wronged her – the media, male chauvinists, the royal commission itself, and even “fattists’’.

Whether Triggs’s autobiography will surpass Nixon’s in terms of high dudgeon distractions, we don’t yet know. But, as demonstrated by her allusion to misogyny as the basis of criticism against her, she is not above self-pity or composing a paean in her honour.

“Perhaps it’s an important characteristic of a truth-teller to be somewhat older and not looking for advancement or preferment”, declared Triggs in November 2016.

“When my term is up and I’m digging in my garden, hopefully smelling a rose or two, I couldn’t live with any failure on my part to raise the critical human rights of the day.”

Apart from critical human rights such as freedom of speech, natural justice, and protesting against racial segregation that is, as seven former students at Queensland’s University of Technology discovered to their detriment.

Truth-teller indeed. But I’ve no doubt Triggs’s garden produces the most beautiful roses.