Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

Standing orders should be suspended to allow this censure motion to be moved. There should be a censure of the Attorney-General for launching an unprecedented attack on the Human Rights Commission, for treating an independent statutory officer with contempt and for directing the Secretary of the Department of the Attorney-General to offer an inducement to the President of the Human Rights Commission in return for her resignation.

This Attorney-General has behaved in a disgraceful and shameful manner and that is why standing orders should be suspended. It is a shameful and disgraceful attack on a statutory officer to do what this Attorney-General did, which was to send the secretary of his department off to Sydney to demand the resignation of an independent statutory office holder.

This statutory office holder has tenure. She has a five-year tenure by the act that establishes the Human Rights Commission. And the reason that this sort of statutory office holder is given five years tenure is to protect her from governments like this one, it is to protect her from prime ministers like this one, it is to protect her from attorneys-general like the one we presently have, who think that the appropriate response to a statutory office holder carrying out to the letter her duties under the statute under which she was appointed is to attack her personally in the lowest form of personal attack. All this government can think of is to attack her personally rather than respond to the important matters that this President of the Human Rights Commission was raising in her report.

Just to remind you all, it is about the children. You all seem to have forgotten that it is about the children. It is not about Professor Triggs and, in particular, it is not about the timing of this report; it is about the children. This government has forgotten the rule of law. That is why standing orders should be suspended. It has forgotten that the role of the Attorney-General is to defend statutory office holders, not to attack them. This Attorney-General deserves censure, not just by this House but by the Australian people and that is why standing orders should be suspended.

The evidence in Senate estimates yesterday could not have been clearer. It went for hours with the Attorney-General himself giving evidence; Mr Moraitis, the secretary of the department, giving evidence; and Professor Triggs herself giving evidence. The picture that emerged was clear: the secretary was sent on the instructions of the Attorney-General to Sydney to demand the resignation of Professor Triggs and a job was offered to her, not the nonsense that we have had from the Prime Minister today denying that there was any request for resignation, not the nonsense that we have had from the Prime Minister today denying that there was an inducement. Mr Moraitis said yesterday:

The Attorney-General wished me to point out that the government was prepared to consider a specific senior role which was mentioned to me and which I conveyed for Professor Triggs.

That is what the secretary of the department said in his evidence yesterday, none of this denial that we have had from the government today. That is why this censure should be debated in this House and that is why standing orders should be suspended.

What happened to good government? Or was this from the period before good government started because it was on 3 February? Is good government starting tomorrow perhaps? This does concern the people of Australia, not as was suggested by the Leader of the House, not as was suggested by the Prime Minister—that the people of Australia will not be concerned with these issues. The people of Australia are concerned with these issues because they want a government that respects the rule of law. They want a government that looks after independent statutory office holders. They want a government that does not attack independent statutory office holders. They want a government that does not attack members—

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