George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Hinch, I respond by making two observations. First of all, Mr Joyce is perfectly entitled to remain where he is until the High Court decides otherwise. He has been declared elected as the member for New England. He has been sworn in as a minister. An issue has arisen because he himself disclosed it in a very forthright way yesterday morning. It is an issue about which over the weekend the government took advice from the Commonwealth Solicitor-General, Dr Stephen Donaghue, and on the basis of that advice the government is confident of Mr Joyce's position. Therefore, there is absolutely no reason why he should stand down.

In relation to the Prime Minister's observations in the House of Representatives at question time yesterday, Senator Hinch, you rightly and fairly point out that Mr Turnbull himself is a lawyer. He's a lawyer of some accomplishment. He's one of the—to the best of my knowledge—three members of this parliament who have actually argued cases before the High Court; his cases include the celebrated Spycatcher case, which he won against a bevy of the greatest legal talent that the British and Australian bars were able to assemble when he was still in his 20s. So Mr Turnbull is no mean lawyer. He has studied—I know, because he and I have discussed it with some care—the Solicitor-General's opinion. He has studied the precedents, including Sykes v Cleary, the case that bears most immediately upon the point. He's discussed the matter at length with me. He has very well-informed and well-developed views about section 44 and the jurisprudence surrounding it, and he has formed a view of his own, as I have formed a view of my own. In his case, as in mine, those views have been influenced by the clear advice of the Commonwealth Solicitor-General.

So it misinterprets the Prime Minister to say that, when he spoke yesterday in the House of Representatives, he was in any way impinging on the role of the High Court or telling the High Court what to do. He was merely expressing his own view about the law—which, as an accomplished lawyer, well acquainted with this area of the law and fortified by the opinion of the Commonwealth Solicitor-General, he was perfectly at liberty to do—and making a prediction as to which way he thought the case would go. That is all he was doing, and to suggest he was doing anything more than that is a misinterpretation of what he had to say and, with respect, quite unfair to him.

Question agreed to.