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

Yes, Senator O'Sullivan, I can. We are actually not up to the process amendments yet, but now is as good a time as any to address the issue that you raise.

May I say at the outset that, when the history of freedom in Australia is written, the QUT students will be remembered as heroes. These young men will be remembered as heroes, and their legal representatives, led by my esteemed colleague from the Queensland bar Tony Morris QC will also be remembered as Australian heroes—just as the people who persecuted them, like Cindy Prior, will go down in history as villains.

Senator O'Sullivan, the purpose of schedule 2 of the bill, which we have not yet dealt with but it is appropriate as well to speak of in response to your question, is to avoid the persecution which the QUT students suffered and bravely stared down. Senator, you quoted the remark, 'The process is the punishment.' One of the problems with the Human Rights Commission, which, by the way, it itself in part acknowledges, is that its processes are too complex, and there are too few opportunities for the commission and, in particular, for the president to intervene at an early stage of a complaint to terminate the complaint if it is not evidently meritorious. That is one of the main purposes of the schedule 2 amendments, and in saying so I want to acknowledge Professor Triggs' contribution to the government's thinking. In drafting these amendments, we did not agree on every single thing, but in relation to the process amendments we agreed on the vast majority of the measures the government proposes.

Senator O'Sullivan, nobody can know the psychological cost to teenagers of being subjected to that kind of treatment. Ironically, they were the people who were harassed. They were the people who were harassed. They were the people who were, at least at one stage of the proceedings, humiliated. They were the ones who were the subject of the vile and false allegation that they were racist when they are entirely innocent.

It makes my gorge rise, I must say, to stand in a chamber like this and see parties of the Left mock victims the way they mock the QUT students, who richly deserve to be named Australians of the year, as did Tony Morris QC. Senator O'Sullivan, as to the cost, Mr Morris and those who instructed him did, in the fine traditions of the legal profession at its best, donate their services to fight the good fight for this important cause. But for their generosity and their professional benevolence, the cost to a person in the position of the QUT students, facing a case fought all the way to the Federal Court, would have been many tens of thousands of dollars. I am not quite sure how many hearing days it involved, but the process proceeded over, altogether, more than two years, I believe. For the cost in legal fees alone of a proceeding that long, I dare say that there would not have been any change out of a six-figure sum. So there is the psychological cost to these young men, and there is the potential cost that, but for the generosity of Mr Morris and those who instructed him, they or their parents would have been obliged to incur.

Because the process can be the punishment, we are amending, by schedule 2 of the bill, the Human Rights Commission Act to allow for early intervention at the threshold by the president to terminate unmeritorious or hopeless complaints. We are limiting the capacity of unmeritorious complainants who want to game the system, to use the courts as a vehicle to try and game the system, to try and extort a financial settlement out of a person against whom a complaint has been made. There are various other procedural reforms as well to ensure that there is a timely resolution of complaints, that there is a swift dismissal of unmeritorious complaints and that there are strict natural justice obligations that do not exist as thoroughly as they ought to in the act as it stands at the moment.

So, Senator O'Sullivan, I hope that addresses the issues that you had in mind. You are a scholarly man, I know, Senator O'Sullivan, so you would be well familiar with Franz Kafka's novel The Trial, which is all about that proposition that subjecting a person to a vexatious and long legal or administrative process can itself be punitive. How ironic is it that it is the very institution in our society designed to uphold and vindicate human rights that has been used by vexatious people as a vehicle to oppress and deny the human rights of innocent respondents? As a result of the government amendments of this bill, which I hope will be passed through the parliament tonight, the vicious and vexatious use of the Human Rights Commission by such people will be much more difficult, if not impossible.