COMMENT

It is says a great deal about the state of relations between the government and the country's human rights watchdog that a cabinet minister would call a media conference and launch a blistering attack on its head without checking the facts of the issue in question.

Had Immigration Minister Peter Dutton had his office make some cursory checks, it would have been established that Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs did not link the deaths of Bali drug smugglers Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran to the Abbott government's policy of turning back the boats.

Rather than demand Professor Triggs "front the media to retract these outrageous slurs", the minister would have been better advised to establish the facts and encourage Professor Triggs to issue a statement on how her remarks were taken out of context.

That statement took too long to appear on the website of the Human Rights Commission, but that is not the fault of the commission president.

After expressing outrage on a false premise in relation to Professor Triggs, Mr Dutton also saw fit to slam Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young as an attention-seeking  "embarrassment to our country" with a record of making unsubstantiated claims that inevitably were proved to be wrong.

The reason? Because Senator Hanson-Young expressed alarm at allegations in a submission to a Senate inquiry that she was spied on by security guards at the Australian-run detention centre on Nauru. Hardly a provocative act by a politician whose claims about Nauru were vindicated in the Moss review.

Follow us on Twitter