Ministers unite against Gillian Triggs on wife killer John Basikbasik
Jared Owens
Australian Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs. Picture: James Croucher
Source: News Limited
FORMER immigration minister Scott Morrison has pilloried Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs for having a “no-consequences” view of the world that threatens public safety, and declared violent immigrants had forfeited their right to a fair go.
Mr Morrison’s attack came as current and former immigration ministers from both sides of politics stood by the actions that have kept Indonesian killer John Basikbasik in detention rather than releasing him into the community. Dr Triggs last year recommended Basikbasik be released, with $350,000 in compensation for his arbitrary detention since 2007.
The Papuan refugee’s offences included the 2000 manslaughter of his de facto wife, whom he beat to death with a child’s bicycle, and numerous assaults during his seven-year jail term from 2001.
Mr Morrison, who refused Basikbasik’s request for a bridging visa in November 2013, said Dr Triggs “seems to be always arguing for a fair go for those who have forfeited that right by their own behaviour”.
“There seems to be no consequences for one’s actions in the system she seems to believe in,” Mr Morrison, now Social Services Minister, told
The Australian.
“As minister for immigration I took a very different view, where public safety came first and those who acted up or who sought to take advantage of Australia’s generosity would not be given the sort of rails run that Ms Triggs and other advocates were constantly calling for.”
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said: “Suggestions that wife killers should be released back into the community with a cheque from the taxpayer are so far removed from the public view, it is just offensive.”
Labor’s Chris Bowen, who as immigration minister in the Gillard government refused to release Basikbasik or grant him a bridging visa in September 2012, said he had “no regrets about the decisions I made in this case”.
The Acting Opposition Leader, Tony Burke, who was immigration minister between July and September 2013, said he was “very confident and was very careful the whole way through of making sure that I was acting according to law”. However, Mr Burke declined to criticise Dr Triggs.
“In every decision, every interaction that I’ve had with Professor Triggs, I saw someone act with complete probity who was principled and fearless,” he said. “I think that was the appropriate way for her to be in that role.”
Dr Triggs, a Labor appointee whose five-year term in the $410,000-a-year role ends in June 2017, was unavailable for comment.
In a report published late last year, she accused successive ministers of breaching Basikbasik’s human rights by keeping him in detention after his seven-year manslaughter sentence had concluded.
“There is no information before me to indicate that the commonwealth considered whether any risk which Mr Basikbasik posed to the community could be mitigated by a management plan to assist with his rehabilitation or by a requirement to reside at a specified location, with curfews, travel restrictions or regular reporting,” Dr Triggs wrote.
Basikbasik has committed many violent crimes since arriving from Papua New Guinea in a canoe in 1985 and has a history of breaching bail conditions. His other lesser offences include assault, grievous bodily harm, obstructing police and drug possession. Basikbasik has been deemed a genuine refugee and therefore cannot be deported back to Indonesia.
The Australian recently reported other controversial recommendations by Dr Triggs, including a $300,000 payout for a convicted US fraudster who was held in immigration detention while he launched vexatious legal arguments to reinstate his cancelled visa.
Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman Greg Barns said dangerous asylum-seekers should be given the same chance to contest their detention as Australian criminals deemed too dangerous for release. “The most dangerous sex offender or murderer gets the opportunity to say to a court they don’t have a risk to the community and they should be released,” Mr Barns said. “These asylum-seekers don’t get that.”
Dr Triggs has many opponents in the Coalition government. Last November she faced a Senate grilling over her decision to wait until after the 2013 election of the Abbott government before launching an inquiry into the immigration detention system.
Dr Triggs explained that an earlier inquiry “would have walked straight into a caretaker mode or certainly into an environment in which this very fraught issue would be highly politicised”.
AHRC commissioners can only be removed on grounds such as misbehaviour, mental incapacity or bankruptcy.
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