Remember when Turnbull used Triggs to hurt Abbott?
Remember how Malcolm Turnbull defended Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs against Prime Minister Tony Abbott?
Triggs was then a useful ally for Turnbull in his campaign to woo the media and make Abbott seem a divisive Right-wing extremist:
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has directly contradicted Prime Minister Tony Abbott's scathing critique of Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs...
In question time on Tuesday, Mr Abbott said the government had lost confidence in Professor Triggs, declaring her report on children in detention a "stitch up".
But Mr Turnbull declined to echo the critique of Professor Triggs by Mr Abbott..
"I'm not going to buy into this discussion into Gillian Triggs. I've known Gillian Triggs for many years, she is a very distinguished international legal academic. I knew her when she was the Dean of Law at Sydney University."
Remember how Turnbull as Prime Minister then offered Triggs peace over a cuppa, to the joy of The Age?
The big chill is over. Its end was sealed over a cup of tea, poured by Malcolm Turnbull from his bright red teapot in his Parliament House office, for Gillian Triggs, the woman his predecessor had vilified, tried to remove and finally banished.
All that's turned out to be another misjudgement, a spectacular miscalculation, as Turnbull finds himself in an even more bitter confrontation with this taxpayer-funded activist.
Malcolm Turnbull is in open conflict with besieged Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs over race hate laws...
Professor Triggs accused Mr Turnbull of being “deeply misleading” when he said the commission had brought the [race-hate] case [against three Queensland students], arguing the agency did not prosecute or instigate proceedings.
Remember how Turnbull said he was just too busy to reform our free speech laws?
Another mistake, another backflip:
The Prime Minister is seeking rapid action after federal cabinet last night canvassed sweeping reform options to be debated by the Coalition partyroom today, amid growing backbench pressure for reform. In his strongest comments so far on the divisive issue, Mr Turnbull backed concerns that the “bar is set too low” for complaints against speech that “offends” and “insults” under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
In a two-stage plan of attack, the government is preparing to overhaul the process to terminate petty claims while also examining amendments to section 18C through an inquiry by parliament’s human rights committee.
Tin ear.
UPDATE
Gillian Triggs is either completely deluded or deliberately deceptive.
She needs to clear it up after her latest statements yesterday in which she touched on the conduct of her Human Rights Commission in the troubling case of how students from the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane had their rights trashed.
In an interview with Fairfax Media yesterday, Triggs hit out at Malcolm Turnbull and “also defended the commission’s handling of the QUT case, saying the complaint met the threshold when it was lodged”...
This is how Fairfax Media quoted Triggs: “We kept on with it because we had every belief in the university and the students and Ms (Cindy) Prior (the complainant) that they were acting in good faith and would conciliate. After 12 or 13 months, it became very clear that we could not conciliate and therefore we terminated it, which allowed the parties to go to court if they wanted to.”...
What really happened shows why the commission should be subjected to searing scrutiny for its abject handling of this case and perhaps others we never hear of.
Because when Prior went to the commission in late May 2014 to complain that seven named students were guilty of racial hatred under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act for their Facebook posts, neither Triggs nor anyone else bothered to tell the students.
For 14 months, as the staff who answer to Triggs corresponded with the solicitors for Prior and QUT, the real victims in this saga, the students, were treated like mushrooms...
The record shows that on about July 28, 2015, some of the seven students were told for the first time that they were accused of racial hatred. They had no more than three business days to prepare for what is meant to be the commission’s “primary objective” — the conciliation conference, run by a staffer from the rights body.