Racism complaint kept from QUT students

A group of Queensland university students were not told about a racial discrimination case against them for more than a year at the behest of the woman making the complaint.

Documents filed in the Federal Court indicate neither the Australian Human Rights Commission nor the Queensland University of Technology notified the students of the matter because lawyers for the complainant, Cindy Prior, had asked them not to.

Ms Prior was working as an administration officer in May 2013 when she asked three students to leave an indigenous-only computer lab, prompting one, Alex Wood, to post about the incident on Facebook.

"Just got kicked out of the unsigned Indigenous computer room. QUT is stopping segregation with segregation," he posted on the QUT Stalker Space page.

The post attracted a number of comments critical of the existence of the indigenous-only room, while others defended it.

Ms Prior, an indigenous woman, is suing Mr Wood, Jackson Powell - who wrote "I wonder where the white supremacist lab is" post - and Calum Thwaites, who has emphatically denied posting "ITT n*****s".

Other students were named in the lawsuit but have since agreed to a settlement.

The students were not told of the complaint against them until days before a key AHRC conciliation conference, which paved the way for the lawsuit, and one says he was not notified at all.

In the court documents, the lawyer representing two of the students, Tony Morris QC, suggests QUT "kept its students in the dark and then cut them adrift", but the university's lawyers have rejected that assertion.

Ms Prior is also suing QUT, saying she felt unsafe leaving her home due to fears of being verbally abused and was unable to return to work in a role requiring face-to-face contact with white people.

She is claiming almost $250,000 in lost wages and general damages, and is also seeking compensation for future economic loss.

A letter from QUT's law firm, Minter Ellison, filed in the Federal Court, states Ms Prior's solicitors wrote to the AHRC on June 2, 2014 and requested the complaint not be served to the students until attempts to reach a settlement with the university had concluded.

The students were only notified 13 months later, a few days before the final conciliation conference on August 3, 2015.

Later that month, the AHRC terminated the complaint, finding there was no reasonable prospect of the matter being resolved by conciliation, which paved the way for the court case.

Brisbane lawyer Aaron Potts, who is not involved in the case but has read the court material, said if the trio had been notified the case was before the AHRC, they could have had the matter dispensed with.

"It might well be the case that they were denied any form of real natural justice or procedural fairness in the Human Rights Commission process," he told AAP.

"The possibility that they were deliberately excluded from the process cannot be ruled out."