![triggs loopy glare](https://quadrant.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/triggs-loopy-glare.jpg)
Gillian Triggs, Magnificent Failure
I’d like to extend hearty congratulations to Gillian Triggs, mercifully and soon to be the former president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, for winning the Voltaire award from Liberty Victoria for defending freedom of speech.
It might seem incredibly odd that such an award be given to someone who has expressed genuine regret — not the ironic kind — that laws such as Section 18C can only be deployed to police public speech, not private dinner-table conversations. The woman to be honoured also presided over the AHRC during the ill-fated Queensland University of Technology case, which saw blameless students locked in a three-year legal battle against a complainant who took issue with their criticism of a computer lab segregated by race, further demanding substantial cash payouts to assuage her hurt feelings. Such is Ms Triggs’ managerial competence that the victims of that complaint were not notified for months that their ludicrously alleged racism had become the…
Madam: Archbishop Fisher (July-August 2024) does not resist the attacks on his church by the political, social or scientific atheists and those who insist on not being told what to do.
Aug 29 2024
6 mins
To claim Aborigines have the world's oldest continuous culture is to misunderstand the meaning of culture, which continuously changes over time and location. For a culture not to change over time would be a reproach and certainly not a cause for celebration, for it would indicate that there had been no capacity to adapt. Clearly this has not been the case
Aug 20 2024
23 mins
A friend and longtime supporter of Quadrant, Clive James sent us a poem in 2010, which we published in our December issue. Like the Taronga Park Aquarium he recalls in its 'mocked-up sandstone cave' it's not to be forgotten
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2 mins