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

I seek an explanation from the Attorney-General on the following matters. The Attorney-General has specifically refused to allow answers as to whether his office prepared a direction under the Judiciary Act, which would have prevented the Australian tax office from intervening in the Bell matter. Will the Attorney-General give us that answer now? Secondly, does the Attorney-General believe that he is above the rules of the Senate which specify legal privilege is not on its own a basis for refusing to answer questions in a Senate committee? Why has the Attorney-General not complied with the Senate's request to provide a legitimate basis for a public interest immunity claim? I note that in his response to the Senate tabled on 23 March, the Attorney-General stated:

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 here nor there. The fact is that, in general, such matters are not disclosed.

Can the Attorney-General explain to the Senate why he believes that what the Senate accepts or asks for is 'neither here nor there'? The report tabled yesterday by the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee required that the Attorney-General 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 of the documents. Will the Attorney-General comply with the committee's requirement?

On what basis does the Attorney-General believe that there would be a harm to the administration of justice, given that the litigation has now ended and there is no risk of compromising that litigation? The Attorney-General would be aware of evidence given before the committee on Monday, 27 March, that the Australian tax office was so worried that the Attorney-General was about to issue a direction that they sought legal advice and made the tax commissioner, Chris Jordan, aware of those plans. Why didn't the Attorney-General's office disabuse them of this notion if he had no such plans? Why did the Attorney-General say to Andrew Mills on 7 March that he was not going to issue a direction unprompted? That would suggest the Attorney-General was actually considering doing so. Will the Attorney-General now tell the truth? Was he planning to issue a direction to stop the tax office from intervening?