George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

The answer to your first question is yes. The answer to your second question is: I am sorry to say that the government has lost faith in Professor Triggs, and we consider her position to be untenable. Let me explain why. The Human Rights Commission, and in particular the president of the Human Rights Commission, must command the confidence of both sides of politics to do their job well.

We understand perfectly that the Human Rights Commission and its president will on occasion have cause to criticise the government of the day. In fact, that is their task. It is all the more important, therefore, that the president of the Human Rights Commission protect her reputation and the commission's reputation for not engaging in partisanship. I am afraid that that reputation has been lost by the president. The fact is that Professor Triggs told Senate estimates last November that when she came into office in the middle of 2012 she saw that there was an urgent need to conduct an inquiry into children in detention—children who peaked at almost 2,000 in number during the period of the previous Labor government—and yet she delayed the holding an inquiry into an issue, which she herself had identified as an urgent issue, until after the election was out of the way, more than a year later.