Laws that allow for workers of offshore detention centres to be jailed for speaking out about conditions are “worrying in a modern democracy”, the president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, has said.

Triggs has been under increasing pressure from the government to resign following the release of a report highly critical of the impact of offshore detention on children.

Senior members of the Coalition, including Tony Abbott, have criticised Triggs for what they claim is political partisanship.

That has not stopped the legal academic from speaking out against policies she sees as incompatible with human rights, including the offshore detention secrecy laws.

“I do find it rather curious that a government that in fact came into office promoting rights to freedom of speech has in fact diminished that freedom piece by piece; whether it’s in relation to counter-terrorism laws, but we’ve now got them in relation to managing the detention centres,” she told ABC Radio.



She said reports produced by the commission and by international rights groups, such as Amnesty International, had all highlighted the problems of offshore detention.

Groups representing doctors, nurses and teachers have spoken out about the laws, which they say could result in whistleblowers being jailed for up to two years for disclosing mistreatment or abuse.



The new agency that will oversee offshore detention, Border Force, started work on Wednesday. Its first commissioner, Roman Quaedvlieg, could not guarantee that whistleblowers would not be prosecuted, but insisted “that wasn’t the intent of the legislation”.

Triggs expressed her concerns, saying: “For the government to try to prevent the consultants – and many of them medical officers – from speaking out is very worrying in a modern democracy.”

She acknowledged that speaking out against the policies of successive governments came at a cost.

“Of course it’s a hot seat and it’s difficult. But most of the work we do at the commission is work that both major parties agree and see as useful,” she said. “But on some issues we do run up against the government, and there’s no doubt at all that it can be difficult in some aspects of our work at the commission.”

She added that 90% of the work undertaken by the commission was done cooperatively with public service departments and ministers.