A regretful Gillian Triggs says she was "very frustrated" when she slammed Australian politicians as ignorant and uneducated and claimed she could have "destroyed them" in an infamous newspaper interview.
The Australian Human Rights Commission boss was hauled back before a parliamentary committee on Monday to answer questions about misleading evidence she gave at a Senate estimates hearing in October.
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I was frustrated: Triggs
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The Human Rights Commissioner apologises for calling Senators uneducated and ill-informed.
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I was frustrated: Triggs
The Human Rights Commissioner apologises for calling Senators uneducated and ill-informed.
At the time, Professor Triggs said the disparaging remarks attributed to her in an interview with The Saturday Paper had been inaccurately reported, taken out of context and subjected to doctoring by a sub-editor.
She recanted the next day after the newspaper's editor Erik Jensen said the recording of the interview showed the quotes were entirely accurate. She subsequently wrote to the committee to correct her evidence.
Professor Triggs – who has been at war with parts of the Coalition government for years over alleged political bias – said on Monday her comments were made "out of frustration" at senators' refusal to read her reports.
"After eight hours of questioning I was very frustrated that the questions being asked indicated that the statute had not been read and that our reports had not been read," she said. "To the extent that my comments offended anybody, I regret them."
Liberal senator Ian Macdonald, known for his aggressive questioning of Professor Triggs at Senate estimates, made it known at a hearing in February 2015 that he had not bothered to read the commission's Forgotten Children report into immigration detention because he considered it partisan.
"How dare you do that when you are an elected parliamentarian and you are expected and required to read my reports," Professor Triggs told The Saturday Paper in April.
"I knew I could have responded and destroyed them – I could have said, 'You've asked me a question that demonstrated you have not read our statute. How dare you question what I do?'
"One can be astonished at the very simplistic level at which I need to speak. Our parliamentarians are usually seriously ill-informed and uneducated. All they know is the world of Canberra and politics and they've lost any sense of a rule of law."
Professor Triggs said she was well-aware the interview had been recorded and she now accepted Jensen's assurances the extracts published were "accurate in and of themselves".
She said confusion had arisen from a headline in the printed version of the interview that was "out of context" and the electronic version, which did not feature the offending headline.
Regarding her misleading answers at October's hearing, Professor Triggs said they were made at the end of a "very long day". "I answered to the best of my recollection and it was done in good faith after six hours of unremitting questions," she said.
She refused several times to withdraw an allegation she made in the interview that Attorney-General George Brandis had fed questions to senators via his staff during Senate estimates hearings, repeating that she regretted any offence caused.
Professor Triggs also confirmed she had made it clear to Senator Brandis as early as 18 months ago she had no intention of seeking a second stint as AHRC president once her term expired in July 2017.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in a radio interview last month Professor Triggs' term would not be renewed. "There will be a new president, that's right," he said. "There'll be a new president after her term expires in the middle of next year."
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