Attorney-General Senator George Brandis says he lost confidence in Human Rights Commission President Professor Gillian Triggs earlier this year.

Brandis says he has lost confidence in Gillian Triggs

THE future of Australia’s human rights watchdog is today in doubt after the Government said there had been a “collapse in confidence” in the impartiality of the organisation.

Attorney-General George Brandis accused said Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs of a “catastrophic error” in favouring Labor with the timing of her inquiry into children in detention.

Dozens of Government members had attacked Prof Triggs and the HRC, said Senator Brandis.

“I am a supporter of the Human Rights Commission. Not everyone on my side of politics is,” the Attorney-General told a Senate estimates committee today.

But he said he lost confidence in Ms Triggs after she gave what he called “inconsistent and evasive evidence” in relation to the Forgotten Children inquiry.

During a rowdy committee session, chairman LNP senator Ian MacDonald condemned the HRC report on young asylum seekers in detention — but then admitted he hadn’t read it.

“I haven’t bothered to read the final report because I think it is partisan,” Senator MacDonald told the hearing.

There was outrage from non-Liberal senators on the committee when Liberal Barry O’Sullivan jokingly interrupted to say, “I thought you might like to hear a male voice.”

The Government denied it had asked for Prof Triggs’ resignation in January, before the report was delivered. But he had wanted to know whether she would stay or go.

Senator Brandis said Prof Triggs had last November conceded to an Estimates hearing “that she had made a decision to hold the inquiry after the 2013 election and had spoken during the caretaker period, quite inappropriately, with two Labor ministers, a fact concealed from the then Opposition”.

This had been a “catastrophic error of judgment” which had “placed the commission in a position where it could no longer command the confidence of both sides of politics”.

“I felt the political impartiality of the commission had been fatally compromised. The Human Rights Commission has to be like Caesar’s wife. It has to be beyond blemish,” he said.

In January Senator Brandis had asked the head of his department, Chris Moraitis, to speak to Prof Triggs on matters including whether she wanted to stand down.

Mr Moraitis said that in response to a question from Prof Triggs he told her Senator Brandis had lost confidence in her.

“And I mentioned there could be another legal position if she thought she might leave — but I didn’t ask her to resign,” said Mr Moraitis said in the Senate hearing today.

“Hard to say when I’ve seen a public servant look more uncomfortable than just then. Not in recent memory.”

Prof Triggs told the committee she had been deeply shocked at that meeting, and by the offer of another position should she decide to quit.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the two were connected. I thought it was a disgraceful proposal,” she said, stopping short of it being an inducement to resign.