Professor Gillian Triggs, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, is the latest victim of a heavy-handed campaign by the Australian newspaper.



The pattern is familiar. A daily barrage, tirelessly repeating the same details, with context and unhelpful facts omitted. On and on it goes, until the hapless victim is supposed to crumple under the barrels of splattered ink.



Manning Clark, Julia Gillard, Simon Overland, Christine Milne, virtually anyone with progressive ideas slightly to the left of the soup spoon, are among the cohort who have been targets of the paper.



In the most recent instance, it is not because Triggs has done anything improper, in fact she was doing what she is required to do under the law.



There are ulterior factors in the wings. Her disturbing report on children in immigration detention is due to be released, which makes her vulnerable as a subject of political assault from a media organisation largely dedicated to fearless cheerleading for the Coalition government.



Last June Triggs wrote a report in response to a complaint to the commission from a refugee held for over seven years at the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre.



In these cases she is obliged to inquire and report her recommendations if a suitably mediated outcome is not possible.



John Basikbasik, a West Papuan activist opposed to the Indonesian annexation and occupation of his country, arrived in Australia by canoe in 1985. He was granted a protection visa 11 years later, but this was after he had committed a range of criminal offences dating from 1986.



In May 2000, he was charged with the manslaughter of his partner. He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment, with a non-parole period of two-and-a-half years. His protection visa was cancelled in 2003 and subsequently he was detained at Villawood, where he’s been since.

He complained to the commission that his human rights have been violated under the article 9 of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights, which Australia has ratified:



9 (1). Everyone has the right to liberty and security of person. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest or detention. No one shall be deprived of his liberty except on such grounds and in accordance with such procedure as are established by law.

The ICCPR is actually a schedule to the Australian Human Rights Commission Act.



Triggs examined the case and found that his detention is arbitrary under the law. He is being held without charge, potentially indefinitely, while the government has failed to determine other forms of less restrictive detention or take action to find a third country of resettlement.



Further, his detention is “disproportionate to a legitimate aim of the Commonwealth”.



The department of immigration rather fetchingly says it can’t send Basikbasik back to Indonesia because that would be contrary to our non-refoulement obligations under the Refugee Convention.



This moment of enlightenment has not lived on, for as we know the current government’s most recent amendments to the Migration Act have given the minister the power to refoule refugees and asylum seekers to his heart’s content.



The Australian Human Rights Commission Act requires the commission to inquire into “any practice that may be insistent with or contrary” to any human rights. The international obligations are the principle ones in this context that the commission is required by law to uphold.

Various medical reports that were examined by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal in 2010, which confirmed the minister’s decision to refuse a protection visa, indicated that at least a proportion of Basikbasik’s more recent behavioural problems are attributed to his long period of detention. It was found there is a risk that his mental health will deteriorate if incarceration continues.



What the president of the commission has recommend to the attorney general, George Brandis, is that the the complainant be released from Villawood and some other form of community detention be found for him.



Contrary to a belief that finds its way into the media, she had not recommended that he be sent into the community at large.



As her report said:



There is no information before me to indicate that the Commonwealth considered whether any risk which Mr Basikbasik posed to the community could be mitigated by a management plan to assist with his rehabilitation or by a requirement to reside at a specified location, with curfews, travel restrictions or regular reporting. It does not appear that it was necessary to detain Mr Basikbasik in an immigration detention centre.

What added to the breathless condemnation of Triggs was her recommendation that Basikbasik be compensated for his arbitrary detention for seven or so years, and she fixed on an amount of $350,000.

Compensation is a remedy available under the AHRC Act. Triggs used as a guide damages that have been awarded by the courts in cases of false imprisonment.

She pointed to the case of one illegally detained prisoner who was awarded damages of $100,000 for loss of liberty for a period of 16 months.

Another case involved wrongful imprisonment for nearly a year following the cancellation of a permanent residency visa on character grounds. The prisoner was awarded $116,000 by the courts.

In another cited case of wrongful imprisonment in immigration detention, the judge said he would have awarded $265,000 for just over three years.

On this basis, a recommendation of $350,000 for over seven years arbitrary detention is not excessive.



This morning Triggs came out from undercover in the Sydney Morning Herald and made an obvious point: “human rights apply to everyone - to people convicted of crimes and to those with no criminal record.”



The implications to be drawn from the assaults in the Murdoch press is that human rights are a very selective thing. This line of thinking takes us into the realm that it is acceptable to detain someone at the government’s pleasure, without charge, without trial, forever.



In lockstep with the Coalition, the Murdoch press has long been an opponent of any formal regime for the enforcement of human rights.



The prime minister has said: “The problem with a bill of rights is that it takes power off the elected politicians.”



In response to questioning about the Human Rights Commission’s Basikbasik recommendations, Abbott helpfully told the media that this represented “extremely questionable judgment”.



It is doubtful that he even read the recommendations, which did not suggest that Basikbasik be given an uninhibited pass into the community.



This is nothing short of a political campaign to take Triggs and the Human Rights Commission down a peg, if not severely damage both of them, on the eve of discomforting news about Australia’s treatment of children in immigration detention.

