In conversation with Virginia Trioli, former Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs discusses her life, career and convictions – as well as her family, her experiences travelling to Manus, Nauru and Christmas Island, her relationship with government during her term … and why, moving forward, feminism may demand more 'vulgarity'.

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Gillian Triggs’s career has taken some surprising turns. She’s been a professional ballerina, a practising lawyer and an academic specialising in international public law. She’s even done a stint at the Dallas Police Department in Texas.   

But Triggs became a household name as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission. Her tenure, from 2012 to 2017, was unexpectedly controversial. The commission’s inquiry into children in immigration detention made Triggs some powerful enemies in the federal government. Later, she became a kind of human flashpoint for debates about racial vilification and free speech, following the high-profile Bill Leak cartoon case.

Some have accused Triggs and the commission of overreach; for others, Triggs was a human rights champion withstanding unprecedented government pressure. Either way, there’s no denying her commitment to the human rights framework, and her belief that Australia needs its own Bill of Rights.

‘Twenty years ago, when I first arrived on the plains, I kept my eyes open. I looked for anything in the landscape that seemed to hint at some elaborate meaning behind appearances.'

Sean O'Beirne and Gerald Murnane in conversation — Photo: Scott Limbrick

The famous opening lines of Gerald Murnane's The Plains might describe the author's own approach to his work as much as that of the story's unnamed narrator. Murnane, however, has been writing and searching – seeking revelation beyond the surface of things – for much more than 20 years. A perfectionist and cult hero, his career spans more than four decades and 13 books, including 10 strange, masterful novels (Inland, A Million Windows and Border Districts among them).

In recent years, thanks to heightened international press and academic attention, Nobel Prize rumours and some high-profile fans (Teju Cole has described Murnane as a 'a genius on the level of Beckett'), there's been a growing appreciation of Murnane's work in Australia and abroad.

At this event, he appears in a rare conversation with Sean O'Beirne to discuss his life and work.