Why we should care about the hounding of Gillian Triggs.

The government is bullying, hounding and trying to get rid of Gillian Triggs. And we need to care about it.

It’s clear as day.  It’s as dark as mud.

The government is bullying, hounding and trying to get rid of the President of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs.

It’s easy to just shake your head and look away from the unedifying brawl. But we need to care.

Not just because this is an obvious attack on a professional woman. Not just because it shows that when criticised, our fearless leaders in the Abbott government come out swinging like thugs in the playground.

We should also care because of the playground. Because the democracy of Australia is not a plaything.

Here’s the background:

In February, Professor Triggs spoke out about Australia’s treatment of children in immigration detention in a report that criticised both the previous Labor government and the current government.  In response, the government declared it had lost confidence in her and the Attorney General offered her a job overseas. She refused and revealed the offer in a Senate Estimates Hearing.  A newspaper columnist, sympathetic to the government, criticised Gillian Triggs’ the way she treated her disabled child.

Then, last week Professor Triggs criticised the major political parties for teaming up to pass “scores of laws” over the past 15 years that threatened fundamental rights and freedoms.

She also made comments about Australia’s policy to push boats back to Indonesia and Indonesia’s refusal to engage with “other issues that we care about, like the death penalty”

In fury, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has called for her resignation.

Gillian Triggs is like the school prefect who keeps standing up to the bullies to defend the school rules.

Here’s why: Because it’s her job.

As the President of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs is being paid to keep an eye on Australia’s behaviour. It’s her job to speak out about how we treat our citizens.  Australia doesn’t have a Human Rights Court like other countries – so we need an independent body that can investigate abuses.

The government attacks against Triggs does more than shoot the messenger. They interfere with the independence of the Commission to do its work.

This morning, the first Human Rights Commissioner Brian Burdekin came out to defend the institution he help set up.

“I’m not sure whether the Prime Minister is overseeing it or orchestrating it but it is a campaign to … destabilise or even destroy an independent commission, a commission established by law in our country to protect our human rights including by violation of those in the executive government.”

I remember meeting Brian Burdekin in 2007 when he headed an inquiry into homeless young people – he was not prone to hyperbole or anger.  But he was angry this morning because he’s worried about the future of the Commission and the country it serves.

And we all should be worried with him.

International human rights lawyer Emily Crawford says it’s the commission’s job to watch out for the most vulnerable.

One of the reasons the government is so down on the Human Rights Commission is because it’s looking to take human rights away from Australians. And it doesn’t like anyone pointing this out.

The government is considering changing the law to allow a minister to take away the citizenship of a suspected terrorist. Sounds good in a way. Who wants a suspected terrorist here?  I don’t.

But by giving a single man the right to take away citizenship is a fundamental shift in our democracy. Cabinet had a robust conversation about it that was then leaked to the Sydney Morning Herald and over the weekend senior Liberals such as Amanda Vanstone spoke out about their concerns. The party of Liberalism isn’t looking very liberal.

Emily Crawford says: “I don’t think its too long a bow to draw to say that by questioning decisions and attacking an independent organisation over the last year you are opening up the scope to instead put those decisions in the hands of a partisan politician who by their very nature are not independent.”

‘Trust us, we’re the government’ hasn’t always gone so well for us.  Remember the war in Iraq? Australia joined  that war because we were assured Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.  He didn’t. We’ve made other mistakes too.

So who do you trust?

A democracy is set up to have independent checks on the government. Even when we don’t want to hear them.

The bullies should not be put in absolute charge of the playground. We children of Australia deserve our human rights set in law and investigated independently, not by the school captain and his prefects we elected because we didn’t like our last lot of leaders.

Whose side are you on? 

 

For more on Gillian Triggs…

Explain to me: Who is Gillian Triggs and what has she done?

Senator Penny Wong: “The Liberals bullying of Gillian Triggs has no place in modern Australia.”

Opinion: “If anyone should resign, it’s George Brandis, not Gillian Triggs.”