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

I know what the Solicitor-General's annual salary is: it's more than yours or mine! The Commonwealth is engaged in constitutional litigation quite often. That constitutional litigation is usually led by the Commonwealth Solicitor-General, who is paid a salary. His salary I dare say is considerably less than the cost of a private senior counsel of equivalent standing, by the way. So, the cost of constitutional litigation in a sense is already built into the salaries paid to the Solicitor-General and other counsel and government lawyers who are engaged in defending constitutional litigation on behalf of the Commonwealth.