Don Farrell (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Centenary of ANZAC) Share this | Hansard source

She has obviously heard the statement too. The first question I would ask Senator Brandis is, if he understood section 109—and I believe he did—why would he have said in his lengthy and detailed statement today:

… one of the options I considered … was that the ATO should not intervene in the proceedings.

If Senator Brandis understood section 109, he would have known automatically that the legislation that the Western Australian government purported to pass to overturn the ATO's entitlement to recover money from creditors was in breach of section 109 of the Constitution. So the question I would ask is: why did the chief law officer of this country, Senator Brandis, even contemplate not intervening in those proceedings?

Of course, we asked some questions of Senator Brandis in question time. We asked:

Did the Attorney-General discuss his view with anyone other than Mr Mills and Ms O'Dwyer? If so, who?

We did not get any answers to that question in question time, and we certainly got no answers in the lengthy and detailed response that Senator Brandis gave us earlier in the day. We want some answers to that question. I think the Australian people need the answers to that question.