There are children and young people nearing suicide because Abbott is trying to bully and shame their protector, Gillian Triggs, into resignation, writes Bob Ellis.

A girl who jumped off a balcony, attempting suicide, in Darwin because, she said, she would rather die than go back to detention in Nauru was told, soothingly, she wouldn't be in detention for long.

But she would be in Nauru for 90 years.

Far from a man she might marry, far from a university education, probably jobless, for ninety years. Dutton has said she will "never be resettled in Australia" and that, it seems, is her lot. Her destiny. Her destination.

Or have I got that wrong? Is there some other place she might be allowed to live, and marry, and raise a family, or pursue a career?

Doesn't seem so.

In a disgraceful performance yesterday, attacking Triggs ("It was like shooting Bambi," an aghast backbencher said) and quoting the numbers of children in detention under Labor and under the Coalition, a hydrophobic Abbott reminded us – and Malcolm Turnbull also – what the issue is.

It is not how many children are in detention, or out of it. It is how they are doing. In either place.

A child of twelve who has been raped in detention is not cured if she is "released into the community". She needs counselling, medical care if she has been infected or impregnated and a family support group – grandmothers, uncles, older sisters – she may not have. And she needs somewhere better to live and see out her years than Nauru.

Because, for one thing, her assailant still lives there and it's a very small island. He is still on the loose – of course he is – and he may come after her on any night, for a "re-match", or to kill her perhaps — smother or knife her and thereby shut her up.

read more: https://independentaustralia.net/australia/australia-display/shooting-the-messenger-forgetting-the-children,7418

"There was no job offer made to the president of the Human Rights Commission," she told Parliament.

"There was no request for her to resign and there was no inducement offered.

"A role was raised that related to international affairs.

"As the secretary of the Attorney-General's department said in Senate estimates, it was a sensitive matter that he did not wish to give details of in Senate estimates so I don't give details of it."

The Opposition accused the Government of playing word games over the issue, asking them to explain the difference "between a specific role and a job offer".

"There is a world of difference, " Ms Bishop responded.

"It depends on who raised the issue of a role and no specific job offer was made."

Further questions prompted Prime Minister Tony Abbott to emphasise the phrase that "it would depend on by whom it was raised".

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-26/bishop-says-international-affairs-role-raised-with-triggs/6266208

The idiot is getting deeper and deeper in his own convoluted caca... Meanwhile the children suffer.

"It is ludicrous to suggest that I would have sought an alternative job when I am robustly refusing to resign. I have always intended to complete my full term as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission".

Professor Triggs was responding to a story on the front page of The Australian on Friday that claimed she had discussed her future over Christmas with "trusted colleagues", and was thinking of standing aside if her reputation was not damaged in the process and she could find other employment.

The story alleged these soundings had been relayed via "back-channels" to Attorney-General George Brandis, who had sent a positive response back via the same route.

But Professor Triggs said on Friday she had "never used any 'back channels' to seek an alternative appointment".

Her strongly worded statement appears to challenge testimony Senator Brandis gave to a tense Senate estimates committee hearing on Tuesday.

Senator Brandis told the committee that he had heard in January from "two entirely different sources" that Professor Triggs was "considering her position".

One of those sources, he said, was his departmental head, Chris Moraitis.

Secondly, Senator Brandis added: "I was informed on condition of anonymity, by numerous sources within the Human Rights Commission that that was so, and that Professor Triggs was taking counsel from individuals about her position and about what she should do. In particular, I was told that she was concerned and had raised concerns with an individual about the reputational damage she may suffer if she resigned or stood aside as president of the commission."

Speaking from New Zealand on Friday morning, Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop appeared to join Senator Brandis in pointing the finger at Professor Triggs.

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ludicrous-gillian-...

That's the end of Julie Bishop as a "credible" (never was credible to me though) alternative to Tony Turdy... She swims in the same sewer as that in which Brandis is doing the senator's crawl...

From Malcolm Fraser

Over the last week, two issues have dominated public debate. One concerns Gillian Triggs and the Australian Human Rights Commission, the other concerns the government’s efforts to tighten security and diminish human rights in the interests of security.

The attacks on Gillian Triggs have been worse than disgraceful. The Commission provided an objective report on the consequences of children in detention. We seem to have forgotten the older debates, led by Petro Georgiou as the Member for Kooyong, when the Howard government in 2005 was forced by some brave actions from its own backbench to remove children from detention.

While the number of children in detention has fallen over the last 18 months, the period in which children have been in detention has grown substantively from around three months to very often well over a year, which, consequentially, has much more severe consequences on the children affected.

In my view, the Commission’s report was bipartisan. It was highly critical of both major political parties, which have continued to enact an inhumane policy in relation to asylum seekers, but particularly in relation to children. The government could have responded by thanking the Commission for the report, saying, yes, they agree that children should not be in detention, and emphasising that since they have been in government the numbers of children in detention have fallen from around 2000 to 200 to 300. The government could have reaffirmed its commitment to getting them out of detention as soon as possible and giving a timeline for so doing.

Instead, the government did not address the issue in any sense, shape or form. It went straight for Gillian Triggs and the Human Rights Commission. The government by its actions has created a major issue for its own credibility and, indeed, maybe for its survival. It is clear the government wanted to attack the Commission and was looking for some reason to do so. 

The government has demonstrated that its primary concern has not been the welfare of children, but the destruction of the Commission. It is maybe fulfilling, 29 years later, Senator Peter Durack’s emphatic statement that the Commission served no purpose and should be abandoned, made officially on behalf of the opposition Liberal Party in the Senate in 1986.

read more: 

http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/malcolm-fraser/2015/27/2015/1424997628/playing-blame-game

A censure motion against Attorney-General George Brandis over his attacks on the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission has passed in the Senate.

The motion, moved by Labor senator Penny Wong, said that Senator Brandis had failed to protect Professor Gillian Triggs during an extraordinary personal attack on her by the Abbott government and Coalition senators during a Senate estimates hearing last week.

read more: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/attorneygeneral-george-brandis-censured-over-gillian-triggs-affair-20150302-13sm22.html

At the February hearing of the legal and constitutional affairs committee, which was primarily about the children in detention report, Macdonald, the chairman, said: “I haven’t bothered to read the final report because I think it is partisan.”

He told Sky news at the time this was because “I’ve got better things to read ... I don’t waste my time reading documents that I am going to take no notice of because, as I said a year ago, I thought the enquiry was partisan, so naturally the report would be and I have to say from bits and pieces that have come up in the last couple of days, that’s been an accurate expectation.”

Triggs called on Macdonald to explain himself.

“He needs to explain himself. He needs to explain his role. He needs to answer why he allows the level of badgering at committee hearings, the length of the hearings and the belligerent nature of the questioning,” she said.

“... it seems they are searching for anything that they can find to damage the commission and me. [Macdonald] consistently allows the senators’ questions to be oriented towards attacking the commission.”

And she said the most recent estimates committee hearing “appears to have been set up exclusively to attack us” with other agencies told at the last minute that they would not be required to give evidence.

“There is obviously another agenda here other than the normal role of estimates, which is to make good-faith enquiries into how we manage our budget.”

“There has been a genuine and profound failure to understand that our mandate is in international law and that ministers are implementing domestic law,” Triggs said.

However, she excluded Brandis from this criticism, saying she had had “rational discussions” with the attorney general.

“He has taken a reasonable and lawyerly approach that we should have a stronger emphasis on fundamental human rights, freedom of speech for example, but we both know that the Coalition would never agree to legislation which would give effect to those rights because that would come close to a bill of rights.”

http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/apr/01/human-rights-commission-president-gillian-triggs-hits-back-at-the-critics

Meanwhile the turdy government had been searching for someone to victimise...

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jan/15/gillian-triggs-the-australians-latest-victim