The public defends freedom, the "Human Rights Council" doesn't Last week the head of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, struggled to nominate anything her commission had done to protect our free speech - now under such attack from the Gillard Government. In fact, she suggested repeatedly she was more interested in defining the limits of free speech than in defending it. Just one of many examples in her testimony to a Senate committee: Senator BRANDIS: Professor Triggs, ... it cannot have escaped you or the members of the commission that in the last 12 or 18 months or so in Australia we have had a very, very vigorous debate about freedom of speech. This morning, on Channel Seven, Triggs was more frank than she was before the Senate about her support for even tougher restrictions on free speech. She said she supported the Government's plans - since abandoned - to make it unlawful to "offend" someone on the basis of their sexual orientation or (I assume) the other attributes the Government listed, from political opinion to social origin. But, she said regretfully, we had to listen to the public and the public was against this limitation of their rights. It says something very serious that the public is defending its most basic of human rights against the opposition of the Human Rights Council. The council should change its name. It doesn't defend human rights but threatens.