Michaela Banerji has said goodbye to her supporters. Photo: Twitter.
High-profile refugee advocate and former public servant Michaela Banerji has farewelled her supporters, telling them via social media she is opting for palliative care over more dialysis for her chronic kidney disease.
Ms Banerji told her social media followers that her last surgery had not gone well and she expected to soon be transferred to Clare Holland House.
“Dear all, I am dying now. I decided to stop dialysis. Tired of being at the mercy of medical practice,” she wrote on Wednesday.
“My last fistula surgery gone wrong. Thank you for enlivening my life with your comments.
“I expect to be at Clare Holland House in a day or two. Goodbye my dear friends.”
She posted the message under the handle @LaLegale, which she created 12 years ago to anonymously criticise the Federal Government over its asylum-seeker policies.
She was a public affairs officer working at the Australian Human Rights Commission, which later became part of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (as it was known then).
Ms Banerji became a fierce advocate for refugees and for free speech when she was outed by her employer as the author of the social media posts criticising the government.
In 2013, she was sacked from the APS and later launched a landmark court case over free speech as a public servant.
She made a claim for compensation for a workplace injury, being depression and anxiety caused by the termination.
The department rejected the claim on the basis that the termination was a reasonable administrative action and Comcare refused to pay her compensation.
She lost her case in the Federal Court but continued her campaign.
Ms Banerji then went to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and in 2018 the tribunal found her dismissal to be unlawful, saying she had a right as an individual to free political expression.
But the High Court overturned that decision the following year, ruling that the government’s limitations on freedom of expression from its public servants were constitutional and ”reasonably appropriate”.
Throughout, Ms Banerji maintained her right to explain Australia’s obligations to refugees as a signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention.
She most recently posted social media commentary in support of the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum.
Thousands of her followers have replied to her latest post, expressing thanks for her human rights campaigning and farewelling her.
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