THE FLAGRANT FIBS OF GILLIAN TRIGGS 

LARRY PICKERING

Four-time Walkley Award winning political commentator and Churchill Fellow, has returned to the fray over concern that the integrity of news dissemination is continually being threatened by a partisan media.

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One hesitates to call the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, a liar but she leaves you little room to call her anything else. Her appalling display when chairing an inquiry into child detention on Christmas Island last Friday left Scott Morrison nonplussed and viewers of A-Pac Channel reaching for bricks.

“I’m a lawyer”, she screeched when asked to withdraw a claim that there were armed guards at the children’s detention centre. She refused, and continued to make ridiculous assertions that there wasn’t a blade of grass to be seen, that children were diseased, suicidal and Ill-cared for without decent medical facilities.

Having recently visited the site Ms Triggs was knowingly telling bald faced lies and was determined to mislead the Press who were eager to report her “opinions”, rather than those of Minister Morrison.

Such blatant dishonesty can be expected of Sarah Hanson-Young, but not from a Human Rights Commissioner. 

Ms Triggs, a confessed Lefty, was appointed to the position of President of the Human Rights Commission in 2007 and up until 2013 had ample opportunity to criticise the sparse facilities afforded more than twice the number of children detained under Labor. She chose not to. 

Yet conditions at Christmas Island under Morrison are first class and above anything available to residents on the island. “Children have a fenced pool and access to swimming lessons, schooling, Tai Chi/Yoga, they participate in community sporting events, have a Persian band, disco, movie nights, picnics and many other activities, all supervised”, according to our Christmas Island contact. 

“They have the best of medical care and are immediately flown to the mainland if specialist care is needed, I wish we had the same services ourselves”, he said.

“I find it most distressing that her professional ethics have resulted in the detainees being used as pawns for her political agenda.” 

Perhaps Ms Triggs might reflect on the care she afforded her own child, Victoria, who she describes as, "being profoundly retarded as anyone who is still alive can be". 

Triggs told the Melbourne Age, "Her condition usually results in death shortly after birth. In fact, the doctors kept saying to me, 'just leave her in the corner and she'll die.’ I know it sounds terrible, but I'd look at Victoria and think, 'Well, you're going to die, so I'm not going to invest too much in you.’”

But Victoria didn't die so, at six months of age, an impatient Triggs, found a family prepared to look after her. The family gave her the primary care she so desperately needed before she died seven years ago at the age of 21. 

Now there’s a CV befitting a Commissioner for Human Rights.

Resign now Ms Trigg’s and stop degrading your commission and your adopted country. You are truly an obnoxious disgrace.