The Abbott government appears to be running an orchestrated campaign to “destabilise or even destroy” the Australian Human Rights Commission, the nation’s first federal human rights commissioner has alleged.

Brian Burdekin, who served in the role from 1986 to 1994, also accused Tony Abbott of “shooting the messenger” by making comments about the commission president, Professor Gillian Triggs, that were unworthy of the prime minister.

Triggs, who has been at loggerheads with the Coalition over asylum-seeker policy, faced fresh criticism from the government last week when she warned that the regional “consequences” of turning boats back to Indonesia could include hampering engagement with Australia on issues such as the death penalty.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, accused Triggs of drawing an inappropriate link between asylum policy and the execution of two Australians in Indonesia in April. He called on Triggs to consider resigning, saying she had reduced the position “to basically that of a political advocate”.

But Burdekin said Dutton and the attorney general, George Brandis, had misrepresented Triggs’s views on the death penalty, which were a continuation of Australia’s long-standing opposition to the practice. Burdekin said he had discussed the death penalty with Indonesia’s foreign minister in the early 1990s.

The Human Rights Commission was part of a continuing effort to reach regional consensus, he said, and “we don’t drop that opposition because sadly, tragically, two Australians were executed”.



“Quite frankly the attorney general and Peter Dutton did not look at the context in which those remarks were made, came out and attacked Gillian Triggs in a way which I’m afraid to say is beginning to look like an orchestrated campaign,” Burdekin told the ABC on Tuesday.

“I’m not sure whether the prime minister’s presiding over it or whether he’s orchestrating it but [it appears to be] a campaign to denigrate, debilitate and I think possibly destabilise or even destroy an independent commission, a commission established by law in our country by the parliament to protect our human rights, including from violation by ministers in the executive government.”

Peter Dutton tells Gillian Triggs: ‘Conducting yourself as a political advocate does nobody any good’ – link to video

Brandis and Dutton issued a joint statement on Friday saying Triggs’s comments were “poorly informed and foolish” and “a gratuitous intervention in a difficult political issue”. The pair reiterated claims of partisanship by saying Triggs had “conspicuously refrained from criticising” Labor’s failed border protection policies.



Burdekin described Dutton’s comments as “unwarranted, wrong and completely unjustifiable”. He said Triggs had been subjected to “vitriolic attacks” by Abbott and several ministers despite a lack of evidence that the commission president had gone outside her mandate.

“I think Professor Triggs should stay there,” Burdekin said.

“I’m not speaking theoretically. I had the same experience 25 years ago. The government offered me frankly a number of overseas positions. My own view was that if I did that, if I stepped down, I left the commission vulnerable not for personal reasons but because I let unfounded allegations about us being politically partisan have some credibility in the public arena.

“Professor Triggs has done her job, she is doing her job, she should remain in her job, and quite frankly, as the former prime minister of the Liberal party, the late honourable Malcolm Fraser, suggested, perhaps the prime minister and some of the ministers criticising her should consider stepping down or consider their position rather than constantly running this orchestrated campaign against her.”

In February Abbott reacted angrily to the commission’s report on children in immigration detention, arguing the inquiry was a “blatantly partisan, politicised exercise” or a “stitch-up” against the Coalition government because it was not conducted when Labor was in power.

Burdekin said Abbott’s “outrageous” comments about the Forgotten Children report were “unworthy of the prime minister”.

“I think the prime minister, to use a sporting analogy of which he is fond, is playing the man or the woman and not the ball,” Burdekin said.

“I read Gillian Triggs’s report. It was meticulous; it was largely based on evidence that came from the government’s own sources. But instead of having a proper, public, reasoned debate in the parliament and with the Australian public, what the prime minister did was to attack, in the most vitriolic terms, an independent statutory office holder ... We deserve better.”

The social services minister, Scott Morrison, added to the government’s criticism of Triggs on Tuesday. The former immigration minister said he did not believe the human rights commission had been “well served by her tenure”.

“I don’t think Australians feel better and more supportive of the Australian human rights commissioner because of her engagement in various issues and what from looking outside in I’m sure looks like a completely partisan approach to these sorts of issues,” Morrison told 2GB.

“I don’t think that serves the institution of the human rights commission very well and above all that’s the thing that I think should be weighing on her mind and those who advise her.”

Triggs delivered a forthright speech on Friday in which she called on MPs to uphold the rule of law as they prepared to debate extraordinary new powers for the immigration minister to revoke citizenship of suspected terrorists.

She criticised the major political parties for teaming up to pass “scores of laws” over the past 15 years that threatened fundamental rights and freedoms.

