Louise Pratt (WA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

What the explanatory memorandum says quite specifically is not that you consulted but that you consulted the Solicitor-General. In the minority report you say that Mr Gleeson is entitled to his idiosyncratic understanding of what consultation is, and indeed the Solicitor-General says:

If one has a duty to consult over the issue of a legislative instrument, the first thing you have to do is tell the person affected or the person with expertise that you are thinking of issuing a legislative instrument. If you do not tell them that they cannot provide you with meaningful comments on either the legality or the wisdom of what you are doing. The second thing you have to do is tell them the substance of what you propose to put in the instrument. Now, if the Attorney had done both those things, the issues that we now have before us would have played out in a very different fashion.

So I very much stand by the findings of our report—