While the details of the attempt to secure Triggs' resignation were being teased out in a Senate committee on Tuesday, the Prime Minister was applying the egg-beater in the Parliament. George Brandis and Gillian Triggs at the Senate estimates hearing on Tuesday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Not only had Triggs lost the confidence of the government, Tony Abbott declared, she had lost the confidence of the Australian people. How would he know? The charge is not that Triggs engaged in misconduct. Nor is there any desire, Brandis stressed, to reflect on her professional reputation as an academic lawyer or as an "eminent citizen" of this country. Rather, she stands accused of leading the commission in a partisan manner by embarking on an inquiry into children in immigration detention, when this problem peaked under the Labor government.

To back up the case of partisan conduct, Brandis accuses Triggs of meeting with Labor ministers during the caretaker period of government before the last election and of giving inconsistent answers during a gruelling first appearance before the same Senate committee in November. On the attack: Prime Minister Tony Abbott in Parliament on Tuesday. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen The result, he maintains, is that the Human Rights Commission no longer commands the respect of the conservative side of politics, and that Professor Triggs should recognise that her position is untenable. To justify his offer of another government job if she resigned, Brandis claimed he had it from two sources that she was "considering" her position in the light of criticism from the government and relentless campaign by The Australian to remove her. The problem for the government is that she pleads innocent to all charges, and refused to buckle under hours of interrogation in the Senate committee room on Tuesday.

The inquiry was about the impact of immigration detention on children under the Labor government and this one, she insisted. It was not partisan. Moreover, she had met only one minister during the caretaker period - at his request - and had been advised that it was not in breach of the caretaker convention. Finally, the consistencies in her previous testimony had all been clarified in correspondence to the committee. To the suggestion that she had confided in either Brandis' department head or in her human rights commissioners that she was considering resigning, the answer was emphatic. It wasn't true. Loading This, combined with her determination to continue to perform her role to the best of her ability, left Brandis with but one conclusion: "I don't know where we go from here," he said.