We have watched with growing concern the personal and political attacks on Gillian Triggs, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission. She has an important statutory role which requires her to apply international human rights standards to domestic issues where human rights concerns have been raised. She has done so with respect to her report on children in detention.
While parliamentarians and other commentators are entitled to disagree with her conclusions, independent statutory officers should not be subject to highly personal attacks. People in roles such as human rights commissioner should be allowed to carry out those roles independently, without fear of personal attack. Modern democracies rely on such experts to assist in holding governments to account. We call on our parliamentarians to recognise and respect the independence of Professor Triggs.
– Signed by 34 deans and heads of Australian law schools (Letter, The Age, 18 Feb 2015)