Gillian Triggs was a lawyer and academic specialising in international public law when she was named president of the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2012. An extremely controversial five years in the job followed, seeing Triggs fall afoul of the federal government after launching an inquiry into children in immigration detention, and other instances where she criticised Government actions and those of conservative media commentators. One of her longstanding beliefs is that Australia needs its own Bill of Rights. Triggs was in Aotearoa this week as the inaugural speaker for the 'At the Forefront: Human Rights Speaker Series', an initiative of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand.