Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The disgrace that is the Turnbull government only got worse at the end of last week when the Commonwealth Attorney-General was outed by his Western Australian counterpart and fellow Liberal for misleading the Senate. Senator Brandis has form when it comes to being clever and weasely with words, but it was evident on Friday that Senator Brandis has misled the Senate about when he became engaged in the deal between the Commonwealth and WA government to see the Commonwealth put behind other creditors, and especially the state of Western Australia in the division of assets arising from the liquidation of Bell Group.

The Bell Group legislation in Western Australia was a blatant attempt by the WA government to use a legislative sledgehammer to resolve ongoing litigation because it feared it would miss out—needing cover for a gaping budget black hole, thanks in part to the member for Peace, that it is leaving to the people of Western Australia, so much so it even cut a secret deal with the Commonwealth to allow it to work. Fortunately, independent legal officers in the Commonwealth had more metal than the Attorney-General. While it is always a disgrace for a minister of the Crown to mislead a house of parliament, it is doubly so when the minister is the Attorney-General, the first law officer of the nation. I would say we expect higher standards of government, but the reality is that, with its track record for truthiness and the litany of obfuscations by Senator Brandis, such misleading of the Senate is now no surprise.