Human rights are far too flakey for this regime … Captains’ picks undermine the independence of the Human Rights Commission … Global assessment body asks for a proper selection process … Shameful B-status looms … Labor Party changes shoes on the Collaery case … Affront to the rule of law … Lectures burned at UTas law school … Theodora reports 

The international standards body is the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions, based in Geneva. Every five years it assesses whether HR commissions meet the Paris Principles which include independence, effectiveness and the ability to operate across the human rights spectrum. 

The sub-committee on accreditation complains that the government has made open-ended appointments without advertising the vacancies or undertaking independent assessments. 

The 2019 appointment by Christian Porter of Perth barrister Ben Gauntlett as the Disability Discrimination Commissioner and the 2021 appointment by Madam Cash of another Perth person, Lorraine Finlay, as the Human Rights Commissioner are cases in point. 

The sub-committee is concerned about “urgent appointments” that by-pass a “full selection process”. 

“… Such appointments have the potential to bring into question the legitimacy of the appointees and the independence of the national human rights institution.”  

Madam Cash has tried to intervene, telling the Global Alliance that in future all appointments will be openly advertised.

It was smartly pointed out that this didn’t amount to a hill of beans, as she could still go over the heads of the people recommended by the selectors. 

“The sub-committee is not satisfied that the commitment from the attorney general is sufficient to indicate that full compliance with the Paris Principles standards on selection and appointment will be forthcoming, either in terms of amendments to the existing process or future appointments in practice.” 

There are other problems. The anti-discrimination legislation says that commissioners are eligible for reappointment, leaving open the possibility of unlimited tenure. The global organisation wants this fixed.

The Paris Principles also require direct references in the AHRC Act to the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. 

Indeed, all core human rights ratified by Australia should be identified in the domestic legislation. 

Another bugbear from Geneva is that the AHRC is not adequately funded. Money for recent top jobs has not been forthcoming, so god know what further starvation lies ahead should a Religious Discrimination Commissioner ever be appointed. 

Not a peep has been heard from the Race Discrimination Commissioner Chin Tan, appointed by Porter. He followed the very active Tim Southphommasane – someone who definitely got on the government’s wick as well as distracting the peanut gallery at News Corp. 

Nor has there been anything interesting from Brandis’ Age Discrimination appointment, former Liberal senator Kay Patterson. 

The commissioner who is doing the heavy lifting is the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Kate Jenkins. 

If the government doesn’t get the commission into step with the Paris Principles then it will be downgraded to B-status. 

It would be irksome and depressing to have Australia’s discrimination cases handles by a B-grade institution. 

This government simply has contempt for bodies like the HRC. Why else would it appoint someone as the Human Rights Commissioner who opposes section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act; supports climate denying Peter Ridd; is against affirmative consent in sexual assault cases; is an opponent of the Indigenous Voice to parliament; objects to a Bill of Rights; and has been endorsed by the Institute of Paid Advocacy? 

As we reported last September, Lorraine Finlay is from a bone dry bunker within the WA Liberal Party, a former president of Young Liberals, a Liberal parliamentary candidate, and a former associate to High Court judge Dicey Heydon. 

Her appointment is as cynical as that of Bookshelves Brandis anointing Tim Wilson as Human Rights Commissioner – coming as he did straight out of the IPA, which is an enthusiastic advocate for the abolition of the commission. 

The commission has been deeply on the nose with the government ever since former president Gillian Triggs pushed for a report into children held in immigration detention. 

Triggs was bullied and pressured to resign with the lure of an improper inducement.  

To the Abbott-Morrison governments, international organisations assessing Australia’s performance are irksome nuisances – to be thwarted at every turn. 

UNESCO is obstructed in its investigations into the endangered status of the Great Barrier Reef, while we also keep sliding down various indexes of comparative global performance.

For instance, the latest corruptions perception index from Transparency International sees Australia slip another four places to 18th out of 180, or a score of 73 out of 100. 

We are now below Estonia, Iceland and Ireland. 

Similarly, with the World Press Freedom Index, which has Australia at 39th out of 180, dropping from 25th place in the previous year’s survey. 

One of the contributing factors is Australia’s high degree of media concentration, a large part of which is a foreign controlled full-time cheer squad for the Coalition government. In the global press freedom pecking order we rank below Bhutan, Cape Verde and Ivory Coast – but just above Burkina Faso.  

There has been a seismic shift in the Labor Party’s attitude to the scandal that is the Bernard Collaery prosecution. 

At the Australian Bar Association beano last weekend (April 30), shadow AG Mark Dreyfus sunk his shapely calf skin shoe into the government’s prosecution of Bernard Collaery. 

Collaery faces five charges for allegedly revealing details of the government’s bugging of the Timor Leste ministerial room in Dili, which allowed Australia to tune into the small nation’s negotiating strategy for the seabed negotiations.  

The Collaery case has seen over 50 interlocutory hearings, with more than a dozen judgments, stretching from November 2018.

Dreyfus told the lawyers’ jamboree:

“… The very manner in which the government has sought to conduct the prosecution appears to me to be an affront to the rule of law … 

I have yet to see a cogent explanation of how the public interest is served by the ongoing attempts to prosecute Mr Collaery, a former attorney general of the ACT who is now well over 70, in relation to the disclosure of events alleged to have occurred almost 20 years ago.” 

Maybe there is a clue there as to what Dreyfus will do to the prosecution should he return to the AG’s portfolio after May 21. 

Bunter Downer was the responsible minister for the Australian Secret Intelligence Service operation in Dili and his ministerial legal adviser was Dave Sharma, now the Liberal MP for the hard fought seat of Wentworth. 

Sharma has refused to answer questions about his role in signing off on the eavesdropping. 

In 2012 Timor Leste’s prime minister Xanana Gusmão wrote to Julia Gillard about the spying and what impact this had on the Timor Sea Treaty. He sought to settle Australia’s deceitful actions confidentially. 

The Gillard government promptly denied the ministerial room had been bugged, whereupon Timor Leste decided to take the matter to the Court of Arbitration. 

In short order, Dreyfus took over as AG from Nicola Roxon, whereupon ASIO was authorised to put Collaery under surveillance. This would have to have been authorised by the attorney general. 

Dreyfus went on to say that the Treaty on Certain Maritime Arrangements in the Timor Sea was negotiated in “good faith”.  

Many of the details are here. 

It’s apparent that there have been numerous unclean hands seeking to punish Collaery for his alleged whistleblowing. 

There’s dire news from the law school at the University of Tasmania, the only law school in the Island Kingdom. 

We had the melancholy duty in March to report the problems which saw a delegation of big-wigs, including the chief justice Alan Blow, the former governor Kate Warner and leading lights of the local law guilds lobbying vice chancellor Rufus Black to stop the rot. 

Prof Black, an ethicist, is also a member of the government’s panel that provides “oversight” to the Office of Special Investigator, exploring war crimes by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan. 

There are reports of high staff turnover at the law school, and the prospect of a “mainland provider” being engaged for practical legal training. 

On it goes, with a new missive from the Law Society of Tasmania and the Tasmania University Law Society on April 29 dispatched to alumni claiming that 15 academic staff have left the law school since 2020 and nine since July 2021. 

There’s concern that more staff are on their way out because of the “implementation of a new LLB delivery model …” 

Teaching loads have increased leaving little time for research or “community engagement”. The ranks of people with expertise in the core Priestley 11 subjects are thinning fast. 

The new arrangements would see a dramatic reduction in face-to-face teaching with lectures cut to one hour a week, per subject. 

A despairing open letter from alumni is doing the rounds.