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

As chair of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, I present the interim report on the compliance with notice of motion No. 274.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

And, in doing so, I want to speak very briefly to the report. The chamber will have an opportunity to hear from Senator Brandis when he appears before the Senate at 9.30 tomorrow morning, in accordance with the motion No. 274, where he has been asked to report to the Senate. In tabling this report this afternoon, there are a couple of matters within it that I want to draw to the Senate’s attention. We have examined the answers that the Attorney­General has a given to the committee and there are a number of questions that have not been answered. I note that the government has put in a dissenting report, and I look forward to going through that in detail. In the main, there are clearly a number of questions that have not been answered, where the minister has made a spurious claim of public interest immunity, because he has made claims that are not based on grounds accepted by the Senate.

The report quotes the Attorney­General in his response to the Senate on 23 March, where he says: 'Thus, whether or not the Senate has accepted that matters pertaining to confidential legal advice to government are always and in all circumstances immune from disclosure is neither nor there. The fact is that, in general, such matters are not disclosed.' This is not a substantive public interest immunity claim. The committee in its report notes, 'Confidential legal advice to government are not grounds accepted by the Senate as a basis for withholding details or explanations from the Senate or its committees. Rather, the Senate requires that the minister shall provide to the committee a statement of the grounds for concluding that it would not be in the public interest to disclose the information, specifying the harm to the public interest that would result from the disclosure of the information or the documents.' I just want to draw the Senate’s attention what are accepted public interest immunity grounds before Minister Brandis appears before the Senate tomorrow.