Gillian Triggs and Bronwyn Bishop lock horns on Q&A over people smuggling
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Version 0 of 1. The Abbott government’s refusal to discuss “on-water matters” is wearing thin with the community, Professor Gillian Triggs said, as she became the latest public figure to raise concerns about alleged payments by officials to people smugglers. The president of the Australian Human Rights Commission said it would be “curious at least” for the government to make such payments given that thousands of asylum seekers had been detained as a result of paying people smugglers. Triggs made the comments as a panellist on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday evening, during which the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Bronwyn Bishop, suggested the human rights chief should consider running for parliament if she wished to act as “a political participant”. The prime minister, Tony Abbott, and his ministers refused to rule out the practice of paying people smugglers when asked direct questions in parliament on Monday, but the Indonesian government continued to demand answers over a development it said would entice more people to take dangerous boat journeys to Australia. The political and diplomatic dispute flows from media reports published last week that a total of US$30,000 ($39,000) was paid to the captain and five crew members of an asylum-seeker boat that was intercepted at sea, apparently en route to New Zealand, to return to Indonesia in May. Triggs said it was it was “very hard to say at the moment” whether the claims were true “but it would presumably be contrary to Australian law” to make such payments. “There are many aspects to this,” she said. “One is the constant refusal to advise the Australian public as to exactly what is going on; to declare that something is an on-water matter is wearing very thin, if that’s the right metaphor. Related: Gillian Triggs on Magna Carta: Coalition and Labor agree on laws that violate our freedoms “In open government – if we’re talking about Magna Carta and appropriate systems of government – it is appropriate, these days, that people are advised as to why we’re spending billions of dollars on this program and exactly what is happening in the course of it. “The other point that has to be made I think is that, of course, we have had many thousands of people being detained because they have paid people smugglers. It is curious at least that we would have a government that then pays those same people smugglers.” Bishop said the Coalition had gone to the 2013 election on a platform of stopping the boats, including using turnbacks, and it had been “a very successful policy” that had significantly reduced the number of children in detention. She brushed off suggestions from the Q&A host, Tony Jones, that the availability of government-sanctioned payments would represent a “pull factor” for further journeys towards Australia. Bishop replied: “Very simply, it was the former president of Indonesia who told the former Labor government to take the sugar off the table, which was allowing boats to come and allowing people to land in Australia and allowing people to stay. That was the sugar on the table. “We had said we would stop the boats and stop those deaths at sea – not only the ones we knew about but the ones we didn’t know about, either – and it’s been a successful policy.” The government’s former independent national security legislation monitor, Bret Walker SC, said the payments – if true – would “almost certainly” be illegal but he added that he did not know what had occurred. Walker said the government should answer questions in parliament about what it was doing in the name of the people. “That is the ultimate tribunal, the grand inquest of the nation where details can be obtained,” he said. When Bishop argued that prime ministers from both sides of politics had not spoken about national security matters, Walker said: “I don’t believe for a moment that it would ever be ruled responsibly that national security is involved in the proposition of potentially unlawful conduct in the defence of our borders.” The government’s proposed new powers to strip the Australian citizenship of dual nationals should occur only after a terrorism conviction, Walker said. He said the opinion of a minister could be very different from the verdict of a jury. “Untested intelligence is the kind of material, for example, on the basis of which some people are saying Australian officers bribed people smugglers,” he said. “Because it is untested intelligence or hearsay from another country, we are told [by the government] that we should not leap to a conclusion that it is correct. “If it is fair for that kind of controversy, I would have thought it is very obvious it is fair for somebody who is accused of being a foreign fighter or a terrorist that the evidence be assembled and be tested. That is what we call a criminal trial.” Bishop took the opportunity to renew the government’s criticism of Triggs over the inquiry into children in immigration detention, which the Coalition believed should have started when Labor was in power and more young people were being held. “It has made you a very political figure. Therefore, you are subject to criticism,” Bishop told Triggs. “You have to make the decision: are you a statutory officer, carrying out an obligation with the protection of that office, or do you wish to be a political participant? If you do wish to be a political participant, then you have to be no longer a statutory officer and stand for office.” Triggs replied that she was an independent statutory officer and the Australian people would have a good reason to ask for her resignation “were I to receive frequent praise and commendation from the government”. “Unfortunately, of course, many of our findings and recommendations are interpreted in political ways,” she said. “I’m afraid in the human rights context it is very hard not to be perceived to be political and that is really something we have to manage.” Q&A was broadcast live from the Great Hall of Parliament House in Canberra to mark the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. The other panellists were the Cape York leader Noel Pearson, who called for parliament to hear Indigenous voices, and the founder of the New Democracy Foundation, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis, who suggested a randomly selected “citizen jury” to improve decision making. |