Group of 50 academics, as well as the bar association and law council have written in support of human rights commission president following attacks on her by Coalition over the report into children in detention

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Australia’s peak law bodies and academics have thrown their support behind the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, warning that attacks on her by the federal government are a threat to democracy.



Two letters praising Triggs’ integrity and the importance of the commission’s report into children in detention were written after it was revealed the attorney general, George Brandis, had asked her to resign and government backbenchers had threatened a parliamentary inquiry into “bias” in her organisation.

The Australian Bar Association and the Law Council of Australia issued a joint statement decrying the personal attacks on Triggs, saying they undermined confidence in our system of justice and human rights protection.

In a separate statement, also released on the weekend, a group of 50 academics said that the independence of the human rights commission was threatened by politicised attacks on the office holder.

“The prime minister has labelled this report as a ‘blatantly partisan political exercise’ and a ‘transparent stitch-up’,” the letter from academics from universities across the country, including Professor Brian Burdekin, Prof Andrew Byrnes, Prof Judith Cashmore, Prof Danielle Celermajer, Julian Burnside and Prof Hilary Charlesworth said.

“Neither the prime minister nor any other member of the government has pointed to any factual errors in the report; their concern has been to attack the timing and motivation of the report and to seek to assign all fault to the other side of politics.

“A well-functioning democracy requires that the executive respect the work of independent public institutions established by parliament to perform specific functions even if it does not agree with specific positions adopted by them,” the letter states.

The two professional bodies representing all Australian lawyers said they had taken the unusual step of entering the political fray because the “unprecedented attack” on Triggs was “alarming”.

“The Australian Bar Association and Law Council of Australia agree that personal attacks deflect attention from the very serious findings of the report and place an individual office holder under significant pressure – we cannot tolerate our public officials and institutions being subjected to this barrage for fulfilling their statutory duties,” ABA president Fiona McLeod and Law Council president Duncan McConnel said.

“To do so is to compromise the integrity of those institutions charged with holding the government to account.”

On Monday, more academics added their name to the letter. They were Professor Luke Nottage, Sydney law school, University of Sydney; Professor Michelle Foster, Melbourne law school, University of Melbourne; Professor Ana Vrdoljak, UTS Law, University of Technology, Sydney; Fiona McGaughey, centre for human rights education, Curtin University; Ruth Machalias, faculty of law, University of Sydney; Associate Professor Shaun McVeigh, Melbourne law school, University of Melbourne; Carolyn Adams, senior lecturer, Macquarie law school, Macquarie University.