Alex Gallacher (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Over the last 44 years, there have been 17-odd Attorneys-General, and there are some pretty august names in there: Gough Whitlam QC, Lionel Murphy QC, Kep Enderby QC, Sir Ivor Greenwood QC, Bob Ellicott QC, Senator Peter Durack QC, Senator Gareth Evans QC, Lionel Bowen, Michael Duffy, Duncan Kerr, Michael Lavarch, Darryl Williams QC, Philip Ruddock, Robert McClelland, Nicola Roxon, Mark Dreyfus QC and Senator George Brandis QC. Out of those 44-year history of the Australian Parliament, only one Attorney-General has had the capacity to actually be the story. Only one Attorney-General has an uncanny ability—as journalist Mark Kenny says—to put himself in the dock, not anybody else.'

All week there have been questions about whether he has handled the public statements properly, where there has been contestability about who said this and Senator Brandis said that. It is amazing. Whether it is the building of a bookshelf for his office, creative use of entitlements—the allegations are all in the public and media—the story is Senator Brandis. Whether it is his description of the Hon. John Howard, the most successful Liberal Prime Minister in this country's history, as a lying rodent', always the story is Senator Brandis.

The tragedy is: the Attorney General should be above all of this. The Attorney-General should be looking after the constitutional issues and the important legal mechanisms that make this great democracy function. They should not be the story. We should not have an Attorney-General, proclaiming across the floor of the Senate, that everybody has a right to be a bigot. That is not a considered approach. He might well be entitled to do that, but in my humble opinion our Attorney-General should be looking for the things that will bring us together and not the things that will tear us apart.

When he gave the answer to Senator Peris that 'everybody has a right to be a bigot', Senator Brandis became the story for that news cycle. The commentariat spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the rights and the ins and outs of all that, and I do not think it brought anything to his role as Attorney-General, and it certainly did not do our constitutional respect any good.

So the capacity to be the story is, as Mark Kenny states in The Sydney Morning Herald, an uncanny ability, and our Attorney-General has continually demonstrated his capacity to be the story. With the Northern Territory royal commission, trying to deal with that awful situation up there, the story became who said what and when. With the shackling of the Solicitor-General's office in terms of approach to advice, the story is who said what and when. At the forefront of all of this is our Attorney-General's capacity to be the story—not for the issues to get resolved and not for proper progress to be made in important legal areas but, once again, for Senator Brandis to be the story. He has displayed this uncanny knack.

In the last 40-odd years, among those 17-odd attorneys-general, there have been many colourful characters, divisive characters, people of very strong political opinions and people who have articulated arguments about their positions held and their positions carried out. But no-one in that list—and I can probably go back to 1972 and look at those attorneys-general—really demonstrated this extraordinary capacity to be the story. That is very unfortunate, because Senator Brandis is approaching three years and 24 days as the Attorney-General. Serving for seven years and 210 days was Daryl Williams QC, who would be the least known of attorneys-general. He was the longest serving, at seven years and 210 days.