Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the opportunity to engage in this take note of answers debate this afternoon because Senator Brandis's responses to questions without notice today epitomise what this government is. It is pompous, arrogant and out of touch. Senator Brandis showed all of those traits today. Senator Brandis is the Attorney-General, whose role is to defend the integrity of statutory public officials such as Professor Triggs and yet what does he do? He attacks that public official. Under Senator Brandis's watch the integrity of our system of governance in this country is declining badly because Senator Brandis is more intent on the politics of what he can do and not on what are the legal and constitutional issues that he should be looking after.

Then there was the arrogance of Senator Brandis during Senate estimates when he was reading bush poems, when serious issues were being discussed. I looked to see what kind of bush poem epitomises Senator Brandis. The one that I found was Banjo Paterson's Mulga Bill. Mulga Bill was a man who claimed he was excellent at everything and he was going to be an excellent cyclist. Mulga Bill was full of pride, arrogance and self-delusion. Who does that remind you of? It certainly reminds me of Senator Brandis. Mulga Bill got on the bike and, as Banjo Paterson said, he did it with a 'lordly pride'. He lost control of the bike

At the end of the poem, it says:

And then as Mulga Bill let out one last despairing shriek

It made a leap of twenty feet into the Dean Man's Creek.

Well, Senator Brandis is in Dead Man's Creek, because Dead Man's Creek is where failed ministers go. That is why we have Mark Kenny in The Sydney Morning Herald saying that George Brandis 'could be the first man overboard'. And why shouldn't he be the first man overboard in this government? He has failed as the Attorney-General to do what an Attorney-General should do.

We have had these lofty speeches about looking after the security of this country. Senator Brandis was asleep at the wheel on national security at a time when we were told that we were under the highest threat in the history of this country. He has failed to put in proper procedures and protocols to deal with suspicious correspondence. His office received a letter from Man Haron Monis only weeks after the Prime Minister stood up and told all Australians that they had to be more alert and to refer everything suspicious they saw to relevant security agencies. This was correspondence from a known felon. He was on bail in relation to charges of violent assault. He had been in litigation with the Commonwealth and our highest court. He wanted to make contact with the head of ISIS and then referred to him as the 'Caliph', which is a term used by supporters of the group that this Prime Minister refers to as the 'death cult'. This was anything but routine correspondence, as claimed by Senator Brandis. This was a letter stamped as routine by Senator Brandis's office and referred to his department for a pro forma response. To make matters worse, it was not even referred to ASIO or the Australian Federal Police.

The Mulga Bill of the Senate, Senator Brandis, should not hang around and wait to get the flick. He should have the courage to say, 'I have failed; I have let the country down,' and he should just go away, onto the back bench, and read poetry—read Mulga Bill. (Time expired)