Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The substance of the amendments to the directions is bad enough, but the senator—the Attorney-General—has also misled parliament. He told the Senate he had consulted the Solicitor-General over the amending direction, and he said that repeatedly—in a written explanatory statement and in answers to opposition questions. But the Solicitor-General says something quite different—completely different. He has made it clear that he was never consulted by the Attorney-General. I will quote from his submission to the legal and constitutional affairs committee:

Since the Direction was made, I have written to the Attorney-General and written to, and met with, the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department to ascertain why I was not consulted about the Direction. I have also taken steps to have the Direction withdrawn and for a proper consultation process to commence. All those steps to date have proved futile.

     …      …      …

… any consultation that may have occurred in relation to the Direction did not occur with me … I had no advance knowledge that the Direction would be made, no notice of what would be in the Direction and no opportunity to put a submission to the Attorney-General or the Attorney-General's Department as to my views on the legality or merits of the Direction.

He says:

… I was not given an opportunity to comment on the content of the Direction.

And he says:

… there was no consultation with me at any time.

It could not be clearer. This is an open-and-shut case of misleading the Senate. Remember the substance of what is occurring is effectively a power grab—a power grab by this Attorney-General, who wants to close off the avenues of independent advice that he may not like. This is an open-and-shut case of misleading the Senate.

Regrettably, as I said, this is not the first time Senator Brandis has acted in this way. The catalogue of misleading and deceptive conduct by Senator Brandis is a very lengthy document. It includes: claiming to have consulted the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, Mick Gooda, before establishing the Don Dale royal commission, when no such consultation had occurred; giving the wrong information to parliament about the letter to the Attorney-General from the Lindt cafe gunman, Man Haron Monis, and, when made aware of this fact, delaying correcting the record for three days; failing to defend another independent statutory office holder, the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, from political attacks and bullying; offering an inducement to the President of the Human Rights Commission to quit her position after the commission issued a report criticising government policy; failing to seek advice from the Solicitor-General on a raft of amendments to the foreign fighters' citizenship legislation; openly breaching cabinet rules by disclosing publicly the contents of a cabinet debate on national security legislation; seeking to remove the Racial Discrimination Act's protection against speech that offends, insults or humiliates people on the basis of their race; recklessly freelancing on Australia's policy on the Israel-Palestine conflict and on East Jerusalem; appointing a Liberal donor to the AAT and refusing to answer questions about the conflict of interest in making such appointments; and using taxpayer-funded travel entitlements to attend the wedding of a friend.

Senator Brandis's conduct over the Solicitor-General is just the latest in a long saga of misleading statements, attacks on independent office holders, breaches of ministerial standards and, frankly, poor conduct. His track record is one of evasion, of slipperiness, of belligerence, of dishonesty and, I am sure if you ask Senator Abetz, of disloyalty. It is time for this Attorney-General to go before he does any more damage to the legal and political systems in this country. He is now not only bringing himself into disrepute but also he is bringing his office into disrepute, he brings his colleagues into disrepute and he brings his government, this government, into disrepute.

If Senator Brandis does not have the decency to stand down the Prime Minister should remove him, because it is the Prime Minister who now has to recognise he has an Attorney-General who is not trusted by the profession and not trusted by the Australian community to be the first law officer of the land.