Police investigate inducement claims

Human rights Commission chief has alleged that the government sought her resignation

The Australian government’s woes deepened yesterday after police said they were investigating claims a senior official offered an inducement for the Human Rights Commission chief to resign.

The president of the government-funded commission, Gillian Triggs, has been under heavy fire from Tony Abbott’s conservative administration since releasing a report this month criticising the detention of asylum-seeking children.

The commission’s Forgotten Children report hit out at both sides of politics over the issue and called for a national inquiry.

Australia has long come under international pressure over the detention of asylumseekers arriving by boat, particularly in offshore camps in the Pacific.

In its annual report released yesterday, Amnesty International described Australia’s offshore detention of asylumseekers as “inhumane” and said it must do more to help tackle the worsening refugee crisis around the world.

In explosive parliamentary hearings on Tuesday, Triggs said the government sought her resignation through the secretary of the AttorneyGeneral’s Department, Chris Moraitis, two weeks before her commission’s report was released and offered her another position. She said she rejected the request.

Labor opposition attorneygeneral Mark Dreyfus claimed this could constitute corrupt and unlawful conduct and referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police, which said it was investigating.

“The police will evaluate this referral as per usual processes,” it said in a statement.

Moraitis denied the claims, saying he “never sought her resignation”, but confirmed the job offer.

The real questions

Dreyfus said the allegations “raise real questions about whether or not there’s been a breach ... of the criminal law”.

“We’ve got criminal laws that prevent and guard against inducing, trying to affect commonwealth public officers in the performance of their duties,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

Abbott said: “What [Triggs] does is a matter for her but as the secretary of the AttorneyGeneral’s Department has made clear, she was not asked to resign and no inducement has been offered.”

Abbott, who survived a leadership challenge this month from within his own Liberal party and has been on the back foot ever since, has strongly defended his government’s tough approach to dealing with boat people.