Gillian Triggs

AUDIO: Ambient music

VISUAL: Blurred out shot of a hallway.

TEXT ON SCREEN:  RMIT Logo. Gillian Triggs. Chairperson of the Juris Doctor Advisory Board at RMIT University.

VISUAL:  Rob Hulls sits facing the camera in front of book shelves.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: Well students, today I have with me a very special guest, the president of the Human Rights Commission in Australia, Gillian Triggs. Gillian, thanks for joining me.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian, also sitting in front of books, facing Rob who is off camera.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: It’s a great pleasure to be here

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: Well you are President of the Human Rights Commission, first of all can you tell our students what the Human Rights Commission is, what it does and indeed what the role of the president is?

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: Well it’s a very unusual body because we’re set up by the government, but we’re set up under a statute that guarantees our independence from government. So it’s an odd thing to get your head around.

But basically, we’re given a very important mandate and that is to call the government and the private sector to account to comply with the International Human Rights Treaties, to which Australia is a party and also to comply with the anti-discrimination laws that we have in Australia on race, sex, disability and age.

So we have a role as advocates, as president I can call an inquiry if I choose to and take evidence under oath and one of the most important but least known aspects of what we do is that we receive about 23,000 complaints a year and what happens is that people can come to us, without cost, and we investigate the complaint and we try to conciliate it. And we do conciliate about 72% of those matters.

Only if you come to us first can you then go on if you’re not happy, to the federal court. So we’re a sort of gatekeeper in a way for those human rights questions and those anti-discrimination issues, before you can get to federal court.

And the reason why I’m very proud of the service is it really is a genuine access to justice for a very high number of Australians who, in reality would never ben going to the court, would not be consulting lawyers, but they have got a genuine concern about human rights.

Now, my job as President is basically to make sure all of that goes along smoothly. And I do make the final findings and recommendations of all those complaints. But I also work with my colleagues, who are commissioners within the commission on sex, children, Aboriginal Torres Strait Islanders, on race, on age and disability.

So we’ve got a range of people with very particular folios but my job as President is to make sure it all works. And I’m often the front person indeed, on very sensitive political questions, especially on asylum seekers.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: Gillian, prior to taking on this gig, you’d built up a reputation in international law, in academia, in fact you were Dean of the law school at Sydney University.

Can you give students an insight to how law was taught when you were at law school compared to the skills that are now required by students to practice law in a modern environment?

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: Well it’s very different. I of course went to law school in the early 60’s and law was very much taught on the basis of a massive lecture theatre of 320 students, often in the chemistry theatre for some reason, I’m not quite sure why at the University of Melbourne, and the lecturer would come in at 5 past the hour and talk for 50 minutes until 5 to the hour and then we’d all [pack up our books and go away again.

There was very little opportunity with interaction, very rarely. And we were literally taught the jurisprudence of the law, by wonderful teachers I have to say, wonderful lecturers. But it was, ‘This is the law on contracts, point number one, point number two.’ And that’s pretty much how it went. So I’m afraid we did get very bored. And it was only in the tutorials that you had any sort of opportunity.

By contrast, fast forward more than 50 years, you’re dealing in an environment where, you’ve got smaller groups and where, you’re learning through engaging with your teachers, but also learning by doing much more. So you’re actually going to the courts, or going to agencies that deal with mental health or juveniles in detention or asylum seekers.

Whatever the issue is, you’ve got a much clearer sense of what the law actually means in practice and this is really what younger people are asking for. Of course, coming from my background I see a very great value in the jurisprudence of the law. I love to read the cases, love to read the statutes. But of course I do, particularly in my current position, understand that one of the most important skills of a lawyer is to be able to translate that law into something that’s meaningful for people to ensure justice and equity, which is really why, or at least one of the better reasons for becoming a lawyer.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: So how do you find going from the theory of the law as a law student and even in the world of academia, to your current job where you see almost on a daily basis, how implementation of the law can actually fail the most vulnerable of our citizens?

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: Well that is one of the great disappointments, because I’m somebody who really did learn to love the law and a lot of my own life has been either working in academia, or with a major law firm or in research institutes.

So I’ve really learned to love the law, but in this job, really towards the end of my career, I’ve actually observed the very great gulf between the law that’s affordable by relatively wealthy people and typically the business community, and the law that is not available to really the overwhelming majority of Australians. Now in many cases perhaps that’s not a problem but it is for the most vulnerable in our community.

For those who would never go and see a lawyer, they often wouldn’t even recognise that they’ve got a legal problem, but they certainly couldn’t afford legal fees and its very, very difficult to deliver legal justice to them. But also, beyond the question of access to justice, is that the law as its applied, can be applied in a way that delivers injustice, or promotes pockets within our communities of vulnerability and injustice and that is very distressing when you can identify that it’s there but find that there’s not always the political will to resolve it. And that is I think one of the great challenges we have, a rule of law based system, we’re in a democracy, we have a relatively open parliamentary system. But it’s still very difficult to engage law makers with the practical implementation of those laws to protect the most vulnerable in our community.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: So as President of the Human Rights Commission, you have the potential to be at the forefront of law reform, how resilient do you have to be when you’re in the law reform business?

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: Well quite resilient ion the sense of sticking to your guns.There will be many who will stand up against reform. Lawyers of course are almost instinctively a conservative profession. That’s what we do, we apply the law by reference to the past and past examples and it’s not always easy to encourage some reform thinking.

I think it’s a wonderful thing to be engaged with if you’ve got the evidence to support the need for reform, then it’s easier to draw people along to adopt a reform agenda. Of course reform should be cautious and it should be based on evidence but I think that is the great challenge for the profession today and that is to understand where law is failing and where that law needs to be reformed.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: Well talking about resilience, your ground breaking Forgotten Children report put you under enormous public pressure, in fact there were calls for you to resign, what sort of personal and professional toll did that take on you?

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: Well of course it was very hurtful and damaging but I have to say that my best friend in a sense was the law. Because when we embarked on that report we made certain that we had the law right and that we had the evidence to back the findings and recommendations, so although they were personal attacks, in a way that was almost an indication that there was no substantive basis on which to attack the report. And it was the report and the children in detention that we were mainly concerned about. So I think, perhaps it’s a form of resilience, perhaps it’s because in the end you’re a lawyer and you rely on your skills as a lawyer that sort of got us through.

And since then of course we know that the findings have been replicated and continue to be replicated by all those that visit the children in detention, particularly now of course in Nauru. So in that sense we’re vindicated but vindication is not really what this is about. It’s making sure that you’re straight about what you’re doing. You’ve got the law right, you’ve got the evidence to back what you’re doing and you’re making a point, you’re making a proposition. Others may disagree, but one has, a lawyer, to have the perhaps the resilience to use your word or at least the determination that you’ll stand by your arguments unless you can be demonstrated to have got it wrong somewhere.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: Did you ever think as a law student all those years ago, and I guess it is a privilege, to have the privilege to visit places where you see firsthand, the inhumane treatment that people are dishing out to their fellow human beings, and what impact has that had on your career?

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: Well I think that, the first thing that I really noticed when I took on this job is it’s a national job, it’s a national role. And most of us work within our law firms or in the courts or with government, maybe the NGO sector, or maybe at university, but to take this position on, you’re actually moving across the whole of Australia.

So I would go to aged cared facilities, several hours out of Katherine, where people that had been stockmen, Indigenous, worn out by their jobs, now being looked after beautifully in aged care facilities. Go another hour down that yellow dusty road and you find a deeply impoverished, disadvantaged community that is really a shameful observation for Australia to allow this to occur. So I saw enormous extremes from Christmas Island to Tasmania, Cairns to Darwin. I felt enormously proud to be Australian and to see as a country what we are trying to achieve at the National level but I also saw with despair, some of the issues that we turn a blind eye to and I think we need a greater spotlight on managing those situations.

One that came up and is always despairing is that nearly 50% of young people held in juvenile detention facilities are Indigenous and that must tell Australia there’s something very badly going wrong. Or you see old people subject to abuse of various kinds. We don’t like to admit that these things happen in society but they do exist. So that’s been, as you say, partly a privilege to have an insight into those circumstances that I never otherwise would have been aware of. I might have read about them but to actually see them and to meet the people affected by these policies is sobering and indeed makes one even more determined to bring these things into the light.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: Our students were thrilled to learn recently that you agreed to chair the JD advisory board here at RMIT, why did you agree to take that position up?

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: Well partly because I’m a great fan of the JD, it is a degree that you can do of rouse when you finish your undergraduate degree where you may not have had either the money or experience or opportunity to do a law degree. JD offers that opportunity and I think that’s a wonderful thing, that you can come at the JD a few years further down the track and there law is open to you as a career.

The other is that I do think this JD at RMIT is a very exciting one. It has an emphasis on the practical and an emphasis on social justice. So in a way, the JD here at RMIT is offering the very things that I’ve learnt relatively late in my career are actually so important to being a good lawyer. Whether you do that at the top end law firm or with the civil society working for government or in business or you become an artists or poet, it doesn’t matter. You bring those skills and a sense of social justice to whatever you do to your career after that.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob, facing the camera.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: Silly me, I thought you only came because I was associated with the course (laughs). So, last question, if you had one piece of advice to give to our students, knowing the career that you’ve had, law and academia and now President of the Human Rights Commission, what would that piece of advice be?

VISUAL:  Camera cuts to Gillian.

GILLIAN TRIGGS SPEAKS: I think it would be to take every advantage you possibly can of the time you’ve got, studying for that degree, because you may never again in your life have that opportunity, to question your lecturers, to talk to your colleagues, who are going to be your colleagues for the rest of your professional life. So I’d say really enjoy and absorb all of those opportunities, because those three years possibly will never come again and it’s a wonderful opportunity to learn the craft, the skills of your profession and to absorb it all. So I think that would be my advice.

VISUAL:  Camera cuts back to Rob.

ROB HULLS SPEAKS: Well there you go students, some great advice. Grasp every opportunity that’s made available to you in the course and there are plenty of them on offer at RMIT. JD at RMIT is the place to be. Thanks for joining me.

AUDIO: Ambient music.

VISUAL: Screen fades to black with the RMIT logo in the centre.

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