JULIA ZEMIRO: I'm at Station Pier in Port Melbourne
to meet an academic lawyer and social justice advocate.
Her investigation into Australia's human rights record
plunged her into controversy,
winning her a legion of friends and some very powerful enemies.
It's the formidable Gillian Triggs.
Well, what a surprise.
Julia. Hello, Gillian.
How are you? Mwah. Mwah.
Are we a la francaise? (BOTH SPEAK FRENCH)
Why are we meeting here, at Port Melbourne?
Because this is where I arrived on the P&O line on the Iberia in 1958.
So you were only 12. Yes.
You've come out from England.
Yes. She didn't want to leave, everyone.
She really wanted to stay in England, didn't you, Gillian?
I thought it was... I couldn't believe I was being dragged away
from my perfect life in London.
So you came here with your mum, Doreen, your father, Richard,
and your sister, Carol, who's only a year younger than you.
That's right. It was a real shock.
And I was being very sniffy about it all,
and I learnt a very important lesson,
because I'd been a ballet dancer,
and I remember, just within a few days of arriving,
we watched the Channel Seven dancers.
This was a long... of course, a long time ago.
The Channel Seven dancers. The Channel Seven dancers.
Because the channels at that time had their own dancing corps.
And I remember watching with an Australian family,
and I was being critical of these dancers,
and the mother said to me,
"If you keep that up, you'll never be happy in Australia."
That's a big lesson. And she really took me apart.
And I thought, "She's right.
"If I go around not liking it, criticising,
"I'll never be happy here,"
and it was the best lesson I think I'd ever learned, because I...
..I knew that I had to... I had to get on with it,
and there was no point complaining.
It was just a negative attitude. I had to get over it.
Are you ready to go for a little ride into your past?
I certainly am.
Oh, Gillian, stop it. (LAUGHS)
Isn't it beautiful? It is.
Now, tell me about the Ford Anglia.
Is that your first car? Was my first car, with my sister.
My parents gave it to us.
Well, we were liberated by it,
because we lived in Croydon,
which was geographically impossible,
and it gave us an opportunity to move, you know, on our own terms.
Are you ready? I'm ready.
Oh! So brave.
Oh, you've done tougher things than this, though, let's be honest.
I have, yes. (ENGINE STARTS)
(ENGINE REVS)
Oh, there's no power steering. Gillian Triggs, you're extraordinary.
You just have to learn to work with what you've got.
Oh. Look, there's Senate Estimates and there's the Ford Anglia as well.
Absolutely. If you can handle one, you can handle the other.
I'll say.
♪ Jump in my car
♪ I want to take you home
♪ Jump in my car
♪ It's too far to walk on your own. ♪
Revving!
Gillian Triggs is a professor of law at the University of Melbourne.
She has combined her academic career with a long practice as a barrister
and adviser to governments on international law.
I think that it's a wicked problem
to hold the lives of these children and their families to ransom.
In 2012, she became president of the Australian Human Rights Commission,
and in 2014, when she launched an inquiry
into the plight of children in immigration centres,
she attracted the ire of the Abbott government.
If you do wish to be a political participant,
then you have to be no longer a statutory officer
and perhaps stand for office.
(INDICATOR CLICKS)
GILLIAN: But I'm not known in the family for my driving skills.
It's a bit of a family joke.
So, Julia, you really are taking your life in your hands.
(CAR ACCELERATES)
JULIA: We're going to University High School.
I'm very much looking forward to that. My old school.
What did your parents want you to be, do you think?
Did they have an idea what you and Carol should be
or was it more, "We just want you to get that education"?
I think it was more we must get education and...
..and that way... my mother was very big on
women's independence financially.
You know, it was as though she'd read... I don't suppose she had,
but read, you know,
that wonderful book A Room of One's Own.
One's Own, yeah. The Virginia Woolf book.
I think she... she didn't care
as long as you had the ability to earn your own living,
and that's what she always stressed.
That is a very unusual way for a woman of that time to think.
Very unusual. It's wonderful.
So, what did you want to be? Did you know yet?
Well, as a... you know, 15, 16, I... I wanted to be a medical doctor.
Oh. Um, initially, I wanted to be a nun.
Oh, come on. But I got over that.
Stop there. Right there. What was it about... why... why a nun?
What enamoured you to that?
Having, of course, had all my formative years, if you like,
in a convent, the nuns were always talking about
wanting our pocket money, because they wanted to... to... us to give
to the missionary services in Africa, the little black babies.
And I remember that we would put our...
..pocket money into a little ladder
and a little black baby would go up the ladder.
Oh, how hideous. I know.
I mean, when you look back and you realise
the things that actually are terribly formative in your mind
and you have to overcome these... these things.
So, the pocket money went to the little black babies,
but the point was that... that I so respected and admired these nuns
because they were missionaries,
and I remember just thinking how... how wonderful they were,
that they cared about people in... in poverty
and they cared about social justice, so that was what I wanted to be.
Oh, don't cut in front of us like that.
You're doing an extraordinary job. Thank you. We're getting there.
We're gonna asphyxiate ourselves. Can you smell the fumes?
I remember the smell.
Do you really? I do remember the smell.
We're getting there. It's extraordinary.
This is completely unchanged. This area of Parkville is the same?
All... all exactly the same.
We made it, everyone. To the smell of burning petrol.
(LAUGHS) Burning petrol and rubber.
I think coming to this entrance
was probably one of the proudest moments of my life, I think.
(GASPS) Right.
It's a bit Hogwarts, isn't it, as well?
It is. Very definitely.
Oh! Look at these beautiful floors. It's so beautiful.
And this wouldn't have changed, all these...
It hasn't changed at all.
And the light comes all the way through into the building, and...
..it's really unchanged,
these wonderful cabinets with things in them and...
And look at this. And there we go.
Now, talk me through Triggs House. What's that about?
Well, of course, the school's divided into houses,
and apparently they had a vote for the names of some new houses,
and there we are, so I was very honoured.
And I... I was really impressed by the fact that these young students
even knew who I was or what I... what... what I'd been doing.
Mmm. So, apparently, they did.
And I find that at least evidence
that young people are listening to the kinds of concerns I've got
about social justice and human rights.
"Triggs, Triggs, Triggs!" They'll be in the house. That'll be...
There'll be calls, there'll be cheers, there'll be colours.
There's already some Triggs champions.
That's amazing. I love it.
Let's go into 318, this classroom.
It's enormous. This is a very big classroom.
They're very big and very light, aren't they?
I remember the sp... the sheer space is, it's very impressive.
So, look, it would be safe to say, Gillian,
that you really liked school.
I loved school. Wouldn't miss a day. She loved school.
Let's talk a little bit about your life back in England.
You've referred to that time in your life
as living a Paddington Bear lifestyle, or life.
What do you mean by that?
Well, I guess I mean that it was such a...
..such an enclosed little world
that you actually thought was the centre of the universe.
We lived in a terraced house in North London.
My parents had an au pair girl,
and she would take us to the convent, which was down the road.
I vividly remember my parents took us
to the British Museum at the weekends and...
..my parents were very, very big at ensuring that their daughters
were exposed to that kind of life, so we... we had a...
..I thought, a wonderful life, but it was a very...
a very... a very cloistered little world, of great safety,
and you... you really had no sense of the rest of the world,
and that was really why coming to Australia
was such an extraordinary experience.
But why the move? London was bombed out.
There was TB, poverty, overcrowding.
And I think my parents become very, very concerned
that this was not an environment to bring children up in.
So we had a very short episode
where they bought a hotel in Brixham, in Devon.
(LAUGHS) This was very funny.
It was a disaster financially. They knew nothing about running a hotel.
They lost what little money they had, I think,
so they arrived very, very skint by the time they got to Australia.
No wonder they wanted to leave.
I was dancing a lot, and that was my life.
Yes, now, tell me about the missed career of Gillian Triggs.
Might have been a ballet dancer once. Now, how serious about it were you?
Well, I was very serious, and I did do a professional course.
And I just absolutely loved it. For me, dancing was everything.
And, of course, it was music as well.
Julia, you'll understand that. Mmm. Mmm.
It was always a piano teacher, you know, doing the steps. But...
I really wasn't very good, but I sort of got to a certain level,
and then... you know, there was really no future for me as a dancer.
You... you couldn't have imagined a life as a professional dancer?
Oh, that... that was the life I wanted for myself.
That was what I was working on. Yes.
But then I find myself on a ship coming to Australia.
Do you think you would have become prima ballerina?
No, I think what I would have become
was a sort of repertory company dancer doing the provinces.
That's where I was going to be.
When you talk about that bubble in London that you were living in,
it was also post World War II there.
Were there refugees in London?
Oh, yes, and I remember them as a child.
You know, you would... a very young child.
You would see them on the... on the street corners
selling cigarettes or... or... or matches,
bedraggled, wet, cold, miserable, but alive.
A lot of... a lot from the Jewish community.
Mmm. But refugees from all over Europe.
And as you walking around seeing that,
do you think it had an effect on you?
I mean, is it... is it any coincidence
that you ended up doing the work that you do or...?
Well, there was a lot in between.
I mean, for much of my career, I was really
an international commercial lawyer, to... to be honest.
But... but it... but it... it was really quite remarkable
in my last years of my professional life,
I should go back to something I very...
..I was very alert to as... as a young child.
Alright. Let's keep moving through the school.
Let's have a look in here.
Oh, yes.
Now, is this room familiar? This is all new.
This was all asphalt. Asphalt?!
Yeah, in the morning, we had to be here and we had to do,
you know, God Save... and the king and the country
and the flag went up and our hands were on our hearts
and we had assemblies up here.
I think they do a bit of performance, though, in this room now...
I think they do. ..as you can imagine.
Yes. I mean, there's an audience there.
There's not technically a barre,
but I'm wondering what your ballet moves are like.
Will you... are you still... do you still have a good turnout?
Oh, I can do this and I can... Oh, the... Oh!
..I can do the... the hands. Got the port de bras and everything.
And... and these wonderful gracious arm movements one learned.
Did you perform at school at all in plays?
Yes, we had ballet at school. Bit of acting?
A little bit of acting, yes,
and at the university, when I was at university.
And at university. Of course, yes. Yes.
I was the third prostitute in The Iceman Cometh.
Yes, you were. Much to my father's despair.
He said, "I've come all the way to watch you in a play
"and you are the third prostitute."
Oh, well. You can't all be the lead. Can't all be the lead.
We're gonna leave this place of dance
and head off to this incredible place, to Melbourne University.
People were always saying to me,
"Oh, Gillian," you know, "you should be a lawyer."
Did you know what a lawyer was? Had absolutely no idea.
Great. Great.
Except that my parents were businesspeople
and they always had a law firm that did their work for them,
but I also always loved... I loved debate and argument,
and... and that was a... that was a feature of our Sunday lunches,
and we would have great debates about things.
It was a lot of fun. How fantastic.
I have always enjoyed it,
and that did make me a bit opinionated, I must admit.
Opinionated, knowing absolutely nothing, of course,
which was pretty dangerous.
Janet Clarke Hall. So this is your college.
This is my residential college when I was at law school.
This used to be my room. (GASPS)
And we could hear the lions roar at night from the zoo.
(GASPS)
Almost completely unchanged.
I mean, it's been restored in some respects,
but beautifully maintained by Janet Clarke Hall.
So, did your life change when you came here?
Yes, it did, really, because you come from
your basically suburban family as an 18-year-old
and you walk through these doors, and suddenly, this...
..this is your world now.
It's not home. It's your world.
Honestly, I feel like we're in someone's shared house.
It's a very large shared house.
It is. There's 100 students.
Sometimes they share, but most of them,
at least after first or second year...
We think this might have been yours. Ah, yes. Yes.
Does that look familiar? Look at this. Yes.
(GASPS) Gosh.
And... and a lovely view.
How gorgeous! (LAUGHS)
There's evidence of you here, isn't there?
In the grate here, someone's written 'G Triggs'.
Do you remember that being done? I do not.
My goodness! I have never seen that before.
Look at this. It's a soldering-iron. I have no idea.
Someone's come in here and just gone, "G Triggs was here."
They've put it... Isn't that amazing? How extraordinary.
I wonder who would have thought of doing that.
I had images of you with a soldering-iron going,
"I'm just gonna leave this little Trigg here before I leave."
Instead of engraving it on... in the wood or somewhere.
I know! Now, tell me about the Miss Melbourne University contest.
She knew it was coming. (LAUGHS)
Now, you entered. What was the Miss Melbourne Un...?
No! No, I'd gone home for the weekend.
And when I came back on Sunday night, somebody said to me,
"Oh, we had to find somebody to be Miss Janet Clarke Hall
"for the university Miss University contest, and you've been elected."
Weren't even here to have your say. I didn't know anything about it.
But then I thought, "Oh, well. OK, I'll do it."
Because in those days... it really was about raising money for charity.
I made my dress. Oh, you made your own dress.
Yes. Right. What was it?
It was kind of a... was it a sort of a evening-y...?
It was a long evening dress, big skirt.
Colour? It was emerald green.
Emerald green. Silk.
That I bought at a market somewhere and ran up.
And I think that was really why I won Miss University,
because other people had these gorgeous dresses.
And I'd made my own. I think the judges were quite impressed with it.
And they felt sorry for you? I think they felt sorry for me.
I got a tiara, which I still have, and a big sash
with 'Miss University' across the front, but that was about it.
Let us bid farewell to your room... Yes.
..and the magnificent Gillian Triggs official plaque.
How extraordinary!
So you all ate here? This is where we ate.
This is a bit Hogwarts again.
It's very Hogwarts.
Let's talk about your time
as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission.
You were appointed in 2012, and so many things were written about you
and said about you during that time, and...
..I thought it would be interesting to show them to you
and get you to read them out.
(LAUGHS) Let's hear them aloud.
Let's get specific, as they say. Let's try that one.
Of course, I should say, I didn't...
..I didn't check the tweets or the... much of the media,
so some of this will be a bit of a surprise to me.
True? Would that be right? Oh, absolutely, no.
I didn't look at these at all. Well, why would you?
'Cause I had to get on with my job. That was my way of getting through.
Yep. Well, let's try this one.
"Gillian Triggs presides over the Human Rights Commission
"like some kind of politically correct voodoo priestess
"casting spells and incantations
"against those who offend her delicate leftist belief system."
And who said that? This was Tim Blair.
Now, "voodoo priestess casting spells".
Is that how it felt? Not at all. I... I... I was a lawyer.
Yeah. I read our statute. I read the law.
I applied the facts to the law with an outcome. That's all it was.
I had nothing to do with left-right politics...
Or voodoo. ..and voodoo or being a priestess.
Casting spells and incanta...
I mean, this is... this is... this is language gone... gone crazy.
Next one.
Oh. Oh, dear.
"She has turned this taxpayer-funded body into a soapbox for the left
"and a witch-hunter to persecute conservatives."
Andrew Bolt. I've never seen these. Is... is that true?
So... I mean, that would have been a way through not...
..to... as you say to get on with the job.
It was something not to engage with. Yes, I didn't, at all.
I never read Andrew Bolt or Tim Blair.
But I'd... I'd have to say, my husband did read them
and would... would basically say, "Don't read them."
So... And you trusted...
I just trusted... Of course.
..if there was anything that he felt I really needed to know about
or that some... something was being said
that was important that I knew about,
then he would tell me, but, basically, I didn't.
And nor did the staff. We just... Mmm.
We just got on with the work, and this was going on all the time.
I mean, in my view... well, there are two things to be said about it.
One is, humour is fantastic. Mmm.
And to break through the nonsense with humour is... is wonderful,
and some of the cartoons, some of the stuff that they said about me
was just funny, clever stuff.
I'm very happy with that.
But others of it was... was really quite vicious and... and misinformed,
and, really, there was no point even trying to answer it
or threaten them with defamation.
Next one. Dear. Oh, dear.
"It's absolutely crystal-clear
"this inquiry by the president of the Human Rights Commission
"is a political stitch-up."
Tony Abbott.
But, again, I think what I was, as a lawyer, so offended by, in a way,
was that they had no idea
what the obligations of the Human Rights president were
and they never took the time to read our statute.
But, of course, it was Parliament that passed the statute.
It's Parliament that passed all of these laws.
But they... in my... in my experience,
many of them have absolutely no idea what the law says,
because they're acting from an ideological perspective.
So, as far as they're concerned, the law's irrelevant.
Did you feel bullied?
Oh, I think they tried to bully me, but I didn't feel bullied, no.
I mean, I... I... I felt their comments
were so completely misconceived, so ideological,
that I just couldn't take them seriously, frankly,
and I'd... I'd have to say that while this was going on,
and... and this is perhaps an observation
about the political environment we're in at the moment, is that
this is the politics and that was the, particularly News Corp,
but on the ground and the streets,
people were stopping me one after the other.
I couldn't walk through Pitt Street, I couldn't get on a tram,
couldn't go to the supermarket without people coming up and saying,
you know, "This is unacceptable behaviour.
"We don't understand what's going on, but they're bullying you.
"We don't like it."
There were public attacks. There were also private attacks.
Worse?
Well, there weren't too many private.
Although there was one evening I think I... I can mention to you.
It was Sunday night.
And there was a thing on the intercom in our apartment,
and my husband went down, and he's a very law-abiding man, my husband,
and he came up to me and he said,
"There are the Federal Police downstairs and they want to come in,
"but I didn't let them in."
And I said, "You have to let them in.
"You can't say no to the Federal Police."
And so I went rushing down to the foyer, brought them up,
terrified, of course, that it was something to do with my children
or my family, friends,
and they said, "As you may know,"
they, of course, are now supervising all the Twitter feed
for anything that seems to be aggressive or dangerous,
for the... for purposes of counterterrorism,
and they said, "In the course of doing that,
"we've picked up this person who is threatening to put a bullet in you.
"And we want you to know that,"
and they showed me the documentary evidence of it, and they said,
"We're prepared to offer you some 24-hour,"
you know, "protection," and I was sort of sickened by that, I think.
It was from Queensland. Oh.
And I felt it was far enough away... Mmm.
..that maybe they weren't going to do anything.
Mmm. And so I declined the protection.
And... but they very, very kindly phoned me a couple of times
to make sure I was alright.
So that... that was... that goes on, and I think I'm... I'm...
..I'm pleased to tell you about it in a sense,
because I don't think perhaps some people understand
just how far this social media
and the use of social media to threaten people has gone.
With all these accusations that you were a rabid leftie and a...
Would you say you're a conservative?
Yes - in fact, if you asked my colleagues
before all of this emerged,
they'd have said I was pretty much what they call
a black-letter conservative lawyer.
I love the law. Mmm.
I'd had my sort of more revolutionary days, of course,
at university and so on, but, no,
I... I became a very, very straight lawyer.
Mmm. And that's what I've always loved.
I love the law and the concept of the rule of law,
and to be described as a sort of... what, some of this language...
A priestess. That's the one... A priestess of voodoo.
And we're... and we're talking about the law, described as voodoo, is...
We're in trouble. ..is pretty shocking, when that's...
That's when I... And these aren't sort of always junior politicians.
Mmm. These are quite senior people.
Was any of the criticism valid?
Look, I think they were... I think it was fair to say
why did I call the children's inquiry, for example,
five months after the Abbott government came into power?
I could have held that inquiry during the Labor Party time.
And the point was that I did report numerous times
during the Labor Party period,
and was very critical of the Labor Party,
but no-one was reading my reports.
So, I think the point about an inquiry is that it's...
..moves it into the public arena,
and one of the things we did, very deliberately,
was to bring the media with us.
So we briefed the international media and the Australian media
and we brought them with us to our public hearings
and we generated a lot of informed media commentary
as well as the rather less informed by some sectors of the media.
You can keep those, Gillian, and take them home.
Oh, thank you. Aren't you sweet? I know. I'm really sweet.
What a lovely gift. What a gift.
Hedley Thomas was nasty.
"Gillian Triggs is either completely deluded or deliberately deceptive."
Oh, look, yeah, just read them out.
"Taxpayer-funded activist". Andrew Bolt.
"I think turning that officer into that of a political advocate
"of conducting yourself as a political operative in that office
"does nobody any good," Peter Dutton.
God, Eric Abetz.
"Between awarding compensation to a wife-killer,
"looking into children in detention several years too late,
"dragging four university students
"before tribunals and courts for four years
"just to be found innocent over a Facebook post,
"misleading journalists and parliamentary committees,
"and now this blatant political activist,
"you've got to wonder if we could do any worse."
(LAUGHS)
"That Gillian Triggs can remain in her job
"is one of the greatest mysteries of Australian politics.
"She's claimed and been given the prize
"and impenetrable cloak of victimhood."
Chris Kenny.
Alright. Off to uni.
Now, this is what university feels like to me.
Lots of people. Yes.
Buildings. People going somewhere.
Has Melbourne Uni changed since you were here as a student?
Well, it's massively increased in numbers.
Mm-hm. And a lot of very modern buildings.
But it's not changed in its essential character.
There it is, that... There she is.
..that lovely old law school,
which, as you can imagine, for a young student,
it was remarkable to be in this place.
Did you think you would change the world?
No! I didn't ever set out to change the world.
Never imagined that I could.
But I thought I could solve a lot of problems.
Well, this is a nice place to end up.
It's beautiful here. Isn't it?
And then you returned eventually to this university to be a professor.
It was wonderful to come back.
You and your sister, Carol, were the first sisters
to be professors at this university.
Were your parents proud of that? Very proud indeed.
We made sure they got a picture of it.
I think it was in... in the paper the following day.
When you were growing up, did your parents push you?
My parents gave me a huge amount of freedom
and basically said, you know, "Get on with it all," you know, you...
..if you're... if you're performing as... in a ballet at night,
you come home at midnight and you get the bus home as a 12-year-old
and walk home, you can do it.
They didn't fuss over me.
They just said, "Get out there and do it.
"We'll support you, but you're free to do it."
How has today been for you? Oh, look, it's been a lot of fun.
I knew meeting you, Julia, was going to be a lot of fun, and it has been.
It's a real privilege, and such fun to talk about all these subjects.
I was just fearful that you'd want to ask me
what my favourite rock musicians were,
when I'd have to admit that I didn't know any.
Classical music is more your thing. Classical music, that's it.
And I thought, "Maybe I should sort of study up
"on the rock music scene," and then thought, "No, no, it's too late."
No, I don't see Gillian Triggs giving a fake answer on something like that.
No. No, no.
What gives you hope?
Well, I... I love Australia,
and I think Australians are marvellous people,
and what gives me hope is that they...
..they... they'll right the ship.
They... they are decent people.
And... and we will get there.
But it's been a difficult time.
And always, of course, young people, surrounded by them here...
Mmm. ..always give you hope.
So I am very optimistic for Australia, but I think...
..I think the ship needs to be back on course,
back with the values that made this country a great country.
It's funny you say 'ship', 'cause that's how it started.
That's how it started. It did. That's how it started.
Thank you so much, Gillian,
for spending the day with us. Thank you, Julia.
I know you're fond of a gin and tonic.
I'm wondering if there's anywhere on campus we might find one.
Well, I know a very good pub over here.
I'm sure. Thank you, Gillian. Thank you, Julia.