A Western Australian Aboriginal woman who lodged a racial discrimination complaint against newspaper cartoonist Bill Leak said she dropped the case because she did not think he was going to cooperate with the conciliation process.

Melissa Dinnison, 25, said the cartoon – which showed a police officer returning a child to an apparently drunk father who did not know his child’s name – was humiliating.

She told ABC Radio she didn’t lodge the complaint for compensation, and wanted instead to talk to Mr Leak about the impact his cartoon had on real, everyday Aboriginal people.

But Ms Dinnison said Mr Leak and his lawyers had made it clear that they “weren’t going to cooperate with the conciliation process”.

“So I began to feel that I was being used to push an agenda and I felt that The Australian wanted to coax me into taking this to court because they were confident that they would win,” she said.

“And that a second win against 18C would help to push their agenda, and I guess watering down the Australian Human Rights Commission or even dismantling it completely.”

Ms Dinnison said she did not want compensation, but sent to the Human Rights Commission a list of outcomes that she would like from the process, which included talking to Mr Leak.

“And having him listen to how these sort of cartoons impact on real everyday Aboriginal people who are trying their best to, you know, contribute to society,” she said.

“I didn’t allude to wanting to take this to court at all, I really just wanted to have a frank and open discussion with him.

“Which is what it says on the Human Rights website about what conciliation is meant to be, and he wasn’t interested in cooperating I don’t think, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to go ahead.”

This cartoon triggered allegations of racism.

She said she lodged the complaint to hold Mr Leak to account.

“It didn’t seem fair to me that somebody with that much power and that much sway over public opinion could publish such derogatory and hurtful things like this, and then decide that they didn’t want to hear from anybody who had an opposing opinion,” she said.

“Cartoons like this make me feel like it doesn’t matter what I do or how hard I try, it’s never going to be good enough and people will always be able to reduce me and my people and my family to such horrible degrading cartoons.”

Leak’s life ‘thrown into utter chaos’

Over the weekend Mr Leak told The Australian he found it “utterly extraordinary” that Ms Dinnison was able to make the complaint under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act and then withdraw it without any consequences.

Bill Leak says he had been put through “incredible stress”. Photo: ABC

“This woman, I believe, has very flippantly and recklessly lodged a complaint with the ARHC,” he said.

“It shows what a farcical process this is.

“I’ve got News Corp backing me legally. But if I was a private citizen, this would have cost me an absolute fortune.

“She has put me through a month or so of incredible stress.

“She never met me, she doesn’t have to justify anything she does, no one asked her any questions and it doesn’t cost her a cent.

“As a consequence my life has been thrown into utter chaos.”

‘The process is meant to be private’

But Ms Dinnison said she had no sympathy for Mr Leak.

“The conciliation process is supposed to be confidential and private, and I think it’s 76 per cent of the time they’re resolved through conciliation,” she said.

“All of the media attention that this has received has been through a newspaper he works for, so I feel like a lot of the attention that this has got is a direct result of him kind of putting it out there.

“So no, I don’t feel for him at all.”

-ABC