Labor and the Greens have leapt to the defence of the president of the Australian human rights commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, after a government minister suggested she should consider resigning.

Scott Ludlam, deputy leader of the Greens, accused the government of “systematically abusing human rights” and said he would support a campaign for Triggs to be nominated as Australian of the Year.

Triggs has been at loggerheads with the government over issues including asylum-seeker policies and broader commentary about upholding the rule of law. On Sunday the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, called on Triggs to contemplate her position as commission president.

“When you reduce the position to basically that of a political advocate, I think it is very difficult to continue on, and these are issues for Professor Triggs to contemplate,” Dutton told Network Ten’s Bolt Report.



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

But Labor frontbencher and shadow attorney general Mark Dreyfus said Triggs was doing her job very effectively and had shown a tremendous understanding of the role of the commission presidency.



“What these government ministers should do, from the prime minister down, is go away and read the act of parliament that professor Triggs is operating under, and they’ll see that it calls for her as president of the human rights commission to take a public role, the very public role that she has been taking, in talking about human rights, in raising awareness of human rights issues and when necessary criticising the government,” he told the ABC.



“It’s no way for any government to behave and they need to actually just get an understanding of what’s called for. Next we’ll see them attacking judges.”

Ludlam appeared to refer to a campaign by some Twitter users – including commentator Jane Caro – to nominate Triggs for an official honour.

Support the courage, principles & dignity of @GillianTriggs and nominate her 4 Australian of the Year: http://t.co/elDFrHF0jC I will be. — Jane Caro (@JaneCaro) June 7, 2015

“I see there’s a growing movement to have her nominated for Australian of the Year. I’d be supporting that,” Ludlam told Sky News on Monday.



“Her job is to defend human rights and this is a government that is systematically abusing human rights, so good on her and I’d ask Peter Dutton to get back in his box and look at what she’s pointing at, look at what it is that she and so many other people are concerned about.”

Guardian Australia sought a response from Triggs to Dutton’s comments but she was unavailable.

Triggs did not resign after the government declared in February that it had lost confidence in her over her handling of an inquiry into children in immigration detention, and has previously rejected accusations of partisanship.

In a forthright speech on Friday, 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.

Triggs cited yet-to-be-defined powers to revoke citizenship as an example of the “overreach of executive power” and said the debate seemed to be “between the subjective suspicions of a minister versus an evidence-based determination by a judge according to established rule of law”. The legislation is yet to be released.

The Liberal senator Scott Ryan criticised “Australia’s so-called human rights chief” for criticising the citizenship proposal before having seen the detail.

“Well, look, Gillian Triggs [is] commenting about attacks on democracy,” Ryan told Sky News on Saturday. “When I hear people claiming the mantle of human rights yet trying to effectively undermine two decades now where the Australian people have constantly supported strong border protection policies, I see that as a bit of an attack on democracy.”