Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today.

Questions today dealt with three of the Attorney-General's most recent blunders. There was Senator Brandis's notorious foray into foreign policy, where he suddenly invented new government policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict—which has jeopardised Australia's interests in this strategically sensitive region of the Middle East. There was also his rush to judgement on the impact of the High Court decision in the Williams No. 2 case, where there was no need for the Solicitor-General to provide advice—because Senator Brandis QC was on the case, delivering his verdict on the judgement before the ink was dry. Finally, there was his greatest triumph of all, where this cabinet minister has succeeded in uniting Australians across the political divide, uniting Australians from all religious, ethnic, political and social backgrounds against his plans to remove legal protection against speech that offends, insults or humiliates on the basis of race.

In fact, this Attorney-General has a rare distinction. He is one of the few cabinet ministers who has single-handedly created an enormous grassroots movement against him and his own government. It is quite a political feat. Those on the other side must constantly be asking rhetorically, 'I wonder who it is that George has offended this week?'

Senator Brandis's responses to these questions today were—in part—what we have come to expect. What we generally expect from Senator Brandis is smug and self-important rhetoric and deliberate obfuscation—and we know we always get pomposity. We know that George is always pompous. But interestingly, and I will come back to this, we also saw a new side of George—