Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) 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.

Those questions focus on this government's attempts to avoid scrutiny across a range of different areas. It has become obvious to the Senate that, since its censure motion against Senator Brandis passed, his pattern of behaviour has only gotten worse. Let me run through, in the limited time that I have, some of those issues; I am sure that my colleagues will pick up the other matters raised.

My question to Senator Brandis today focused on the Monis letter. He told us that on 27 May Katherine Jones—but indeed he himself—gave evidence to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee estimates hearing. What happened next? Next Ms Bishop entered the House and accused both me and the shadow Attorney-General of asking contemptuous questions. This is not the first time that—either directly or indirectly—Senator Brandis has accused me of taking a contemptuous approach to something. So let us look more closely at what is occurring here.

We heard today—and, in fact, Senator Brandis essentially blamed Mr Moraitis, his secretary, for this—that it took three full days for his department to satisfy him about a very basic inconsistency. When the inconsistency was pointed out to him on Monday, 1 June, he said that he wanted to understand the facts. Well, where are those facts, Senator Brandis? You did not give us those facts in answers to questions today, even though it took you three days to get them. You had to take further questions on notice because you do not have those basic facts in front of you. What has not been answered is why it took a full week after we were accused of asking contemptuous questions for the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee to be satisfied—sorry, to receive a correction. Indeed, we are far from satisfied, because we have had no opportunity to ask further questions. When we sought urgently to ask further questions within the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, government senators stalled. They will not make time available to deal with this issue, so we will need to investigate other means.

Why won't government not face scrutiny on this? We suspect that there are issues with the other four documents that Mr Thawley referred to. Why was it that five documents were lost within the Attorney-General's Department? That is the critical issue. Why were four other documents made available to the Thawley review from other departments, when the lead department that is meant to have responsibility for national security could not provide those same documents? Where is the problem? Where is the logjam?

We have been accused of asking contemptuous questions in relation to the Lindt siege. These are not contemptuous questions. These are questions about how well we will manage such things in the future and how well is the Attorney-General's Department assisting in identifying when we should be alert and when we should be responding to issues. We now know—unlike three weeks ago—that there were five documents that the Attorney-General's Department failed to identify. All that we got today from Senator Brandis was that he is essentially blaming his secretary for taking three days to come back to the parliament. It should not have taken three days from 1 June until 4 June to identify the facts behind the advice that you were given on 1 June. It brings back memories to me of the 'children overboard' affair: 'We have plausible deniability until the full facts are provided.' Why did the Attorney-General delay this so long?

Mr Moraitis had already been counselled by me on this occasion as to why it took one month to come back to the committee about the correction of whether he had lost his briefcase—why on earth it takes one month to correct the evidence to the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee that, in fact, his briefcase had not been lost. This was the issue that Senator Brandis accused me of being contemptuous about—the nature of the evidence on the earlier occasion in relation to the Australia Human Rights Commission President. That is the other area where this government refuses to face scrutiny or, indeed, respond to a serious censure motion of this Senate.

The pattern of behaviour of this Attorney has only become worse. We saw it again today in the discussion over payments to people smugglers. How can he stand behind operational reasons or operational factors on an important question that all in the public want to have clarified? (Time expired)