Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) 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.

If there was ever a confirmation of a decision by the Senate to censure a minister, it was Senator Brandis's performance in question time today. Here we have a minister who is dismissive of the important question of ministerial integrity. We have a minister who threw his secretary to the wolves at Senate estimates and who did not even have the courage of his own convictions to go and front the President of the Human Rights Commission and say that he had lost confidence in her and he wanted her to move on and that a job would be available if she moved on. He did not have the courage to do that, so he sent the secretary of his department. If ever you could see by the look on anyone's face that they had landed themselves in real trouble, it was the secretary of the department, Mr Moraitis, who was sitting there looking so uncomfortable. He wanted to be anywhere but in Senate estimates.

When you look at what has happened, it was a concerted and organised attack on a woman of significant integrity: the President of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs. What Senator Brandis did was to unleash the attack dogs on President Triggs. That was supported by the shock jocks on the radio, supported by News Limited, led by The Australian, and led at the estimates committee by the Bjelke-Petersen-era bovver boys, Senator Macdonald and Senator O'Sullivan. They were there—