Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

When it comes to this government, its Attorney-General and his representative here today in this place, it is difficult to know where to start. Since his appointment as Attorney-General in 2013, Senator Brandis has brought nothing but trouble for this government, for the legal assistance sector and indeed for the rule of law in this country.

When Prime Minister Turnbull knocked off his predecessor in September last year, Senator Brandis already had a litany of serious mistakes to his name: his total mishandling of the metadata retention bill, his right to be bigots and his disastrous period as minister for the arts come to mind. Mr Turnbull knocked him off as arts minister but, mystifyingly, he kept him on as Attorney-General, a decision which I am sure that he is ruing now.

Even after more than three years as Senator Brandis' opposite number, however, I am surprised by the lows that he has reached in recent weeks. His disgraceful treatment of the Solicitor-General, the second law officer of this country, has shocked not just the legal community but also many Australians who did not even know that the position existed before last Friday's Senate hearing, but they do now.

The Solicitor-General was created as a position in the Commonwealth in 1916 to give independent apolitical advice. This is what the current Solicitor-General, Justin Gleeson QC, was ably doing until 4 May 2016—the date when Senator Brandis destroyed the integrity of the office. On 4 May 2016, Senator Brandis tabled a new legal services direction in the Senate which severely limits the ability of the Solicitor-General to do his job. Instead of quickly responding to requests for advice from a government department, a government minister or even the Prime Minister, the Solicitor-General must now submit a request for written consent from Senator Brandis. Let me step this out: the Solicitor-General receives a request for urgent advice from the immigration department, for instance, at 11.30 pm at night. He cannot respond until he can find the Attorney-General, who might be anywhere or out of the country, and he has to wait to receive written confirmation, a written consent, with Senator Brandis' signature.

In evidence given to a Senate inquiry hearing on Friday, Mr Gleeson, the Solicitor-General, stated that he had already been forced to disobey the legal services direction in order to respond to a request to urgent advice in the required time frame as he believes he is required to do by the Law Officers Act. He said that the concern over this conflict introduced by Senator Brandis has kept him awake at night since 5 May. This is not something that a man like Mr Gleeson, who has represented Australia at the International Court of Justice and the High Court, and is a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague, could say lightly. Mr Gleeson was treated disgracefully by coalition senators on Friday. I note that a Fairfax Media article today asks if they are 'the rudest men in Australia'. They were certainly the rudest men in the room on Friday. But we should not be surprised after their disgraceful treatment of another fine statutory officer, Professor Gillian Triggs, in previous estimates hearings and, I have to say, in the current estimates hearing. This is not, as the Prime Minister likes to describe it, just a fight between two lawyers, to be duked at in the bar common room—whatever the Prime Minister intends to mean by that phrase. This actually matters.

It mattered on the bill last year that enables the government to strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship. On that bill, Senator Brandis asked the Solicitor-General's advice on two draft versions of the bill but never on the final version. And yet, in a written letter to me and the entire Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, Senator Brandis said that he had. The Prime Minister repeated that mistruth, and let us not underrate the significance of this: Senator Brandis and the Prime Minister have misrepresented the advice that they received on the constitutionality of a bill that is now likely to be subject to a High Court challenge. Because of the Attorney-General's arrogance, the parliament may have passed a bill that will be struck down, and that, if it occurs, is no-one's fault other than Senator Brandis's.

It also matters for a current bill before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, called the Criminal Code Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill 2016. This is a bill unprecedented in its nature in Australia, which would allow the Attorney-General to keep people in prison beyond the term of their sentence. It is absolutely right that Labor does due diligence on this bill. I would like to ask the Minister for Justice on behalf of the Attorney-General what the answer is to the question I asked in a letter that I have just sent to the Attorney-General, at the end of a correspondence starting on Sunday. The question is: has the Solicitor-General advised on the final version of the Criminal Code Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill 2016? If not, why not? And how many of the current bills before the parliament has the Solicitor-General been given the opportunity to advise on in their final versions? (Time expired)

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