George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I do not know enough about the acts that establish the public interest monitors in Queensland or in Victoria to tell you whether they are specifically mandated by their acts to be a contradictor. Obviously, I am not going to talk about particular cases that may be the subject of an investigation or speculate about how this provision might bear on those cases, the facts of which I am not really familiar with.

It is enough to say, I think, that the role of the public interest monitor is to ensure that the public interest considerations that are set out quite exhaustively in the act are properly articulated to the relevant decision maker. It may conceivably be that the public interest monitor independently arrives at the view that the issuance of a warrant is in the public interest, applying those criteria in proposed subsection 180L(2)(b), but that is entirely a matter for him. If I may use an analogy with the way courts operate, I would envisage that the public interest monitor would be like an amicus curiae: they would bring an independent mind to bear on the application of these statutory tests to the particular case and, if they were of the view that the public interest was not served by the issuance of a warrant, then they would contest the judgement of the minister. If they were of the view that the public interest was not served by the refusal of a warrant, they could contest that judgement too, I dare say. He or she is to be an independent mind to independently assess and, where appropriate, contradict the minister in the assessment of the application of the public interest criteria to a particular request for a warrant.