Let start with a later part of the story which is headed, Tim Wilson opens up over Gillian Triggs report:

Tony Abbott launched a broadside, saying the report was a “stitch up” and a “blatantly partisan politicised exercise” and the HRC “ought to be ashamed of itself” because it did not hold an inquiry when Labor was in power and thousands of people were drowning at sea and there were almost 2000 children in detention.

Of course, the inquiry has the most certain look of a partizan attack on the government, which the HRC would almost certainly never have conducted had Labor still been in government. Here, however, is the way the story began:

HUMAN Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson has thrown his support behind his embattled president Gillian Triggs, refusing to give oxygen to the political attacks clouding the findings of her children in detention report.

Speaking today at the National Press Club in Canberra, Mr Wilson said he supported all his commission colleagues but also backed the Coalition’s border protection policies saying “stopping the boats matters”.

“Let me make this clear, I support all my commission colleagues. I don’t want this to be a distraction,” Mr Wilson said.

He added he was not going to get involved in “engaging or fuelling the political debate around this report”.

“Focus on what it says, focus on the research that’s gone into it and the human stories that have gone into it. That is what needs to happen because if we don’t then The Forgotten Children report will simply be forgotten and so will the lessons from it.”

What, exactly, are those lessons? That it is bad for children to be in detention. Well, it’s also bad for children to be without their parents. It is no doubt also bad for adults to be in detention, but they are there for a reason. The HRC is actively pro-Labor, whose crocodile tears for children in detention are obvious to anyone who can spot hypocrisy at 1000 yards. The real worry for me, however, is why is The Australian giving such lift to this kind of story at this time?