On Monday morning I woke to the “blink and you would have missed it” news that Murdoch University law lecturer Lorraine Finlay had been appointed as Australia’s new human rights commissioner. An important moment ushered in the previous afternoon, with no fanfare. No wonder. Among previous office holders have been senior lawyers, academics and public servants of real stature and renown. Most recently, the position has been held by Ed Santow, a former chief executive of the Public Interest Advocacy Centre.
The appointment of a relatively inexperienced legal academic to one of the highest legal positions in Australia’s public firmament is questionable. Finlay clearly has potential as a career academic, after doing the hard yards – maybe even as a politician, where preselection doesn’t depend on publication. But she’s just landed a hefty six-figure salary package that would satisfy most CEOs in any sector – and a privileged platform for making expert interventions nationally, and globally, on key questions related to Australia’s human rights performance. Her appointment represents a gobsmacking gear shift for Australia – into a nation where it appears in depth experience and expertise doesn’t matter much any more.
Australia is replete with more senior and expert academics, practitioners and advocates who I believe would have been better appointments as human rights commissioner. Including many lawyers with conservative, right-of-centre inclinations – the profession isn’t short of them. Perhaps they didn’t apply? Perhaps they did?
I don’t pretend for a moment that the general public gives a Highland fling about the Australian human rights commission or its commissioners (albeit even at the height of the federal government’s attack on the commission during the Gillian Triggs era only 9% of the population strongly disapproved of the commission and support for its abolition sits under 20%).
The effectiveness of the commission isn’t interesting to the public but it is in the public interest that it is both respected and has impact.
More today than ever before.
In the social research I do the public are becoming increasingly concerned about the tensions between individual freedoms and public safety. The pandemic has and is recalibrating the context for the usual discussions around human rights. What happens when a restaurant won’t allow its patrons service because they aren’t vaccinated? Can my employer fire me if I haven’t got a booster shot? Can questions around vaccination status be included in a job interview? This new territory requires the highest levels of expertise, intellect, communication and independent minded leadership Australia can produce.
Australia’s public institutions need to be as strong and capable as possible right now. We need to be able to have absolute confidence in them as we head into a future of intersecting, reinforcing political, environmental and economic crises. Consideration of human rights should sit at the centre of our response to these crises and a robust and independent discussion about them could help Australians make sense of the larger challenges ahead.
Without that we are adrift and the relevance of the commission in Australian public life is called into question.
• Rebecca Huntley is a social researcher and consultant
• This article was amended on 8 September 2021 to remove Hon. John von Doussa, Prof Alice Tay AM and Sir Ronald Wilson as previous commissioners, as they were former presidents of the Australian human rights commission.
