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

It was apparently just a happy coincidence that there was this flaming row. Mr Gleeson did what he should have done, which was to unpick it under constitutional law. He gave advice about that. How dare he actually do his job! Then magically the Attorney-General gave him a direction which said, 'You have to get my permission before you do that again.' There was nothing in the statement today about that, was there, Senator Brandis? There was nothing at all.

In fact, this Attorney-General has never given an adequate explanation for why he sought to muzzle the Solicitor-General in the way he did. We know he was not able to proceed with that because this Senate had the numbers to disallow that direction. Senator Brandis beat a hasty retreat when he realised he did not have the numbers to defend the direction. And then we disallowed it in any event to prevent him making the same direction in six months.