Mathias Cormann (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance) Share this | Hansard source

It is my great privilege to rise to pay tribute to our dear friend and colleague—to my dear friend and colleague—Senator George Brandis. Senator Brandis and I have had the pleasure of working very closely with each other, both in opposition and in government, for many years now. I never thought that the question of man or machine was on his mind—I'm happy to explore that further with him later tonight over a drink!

Over the period of working closely with each other we have achieved many successes together. We have debated policy, talked politics and enjoyed each other's company over the occasional glass of red—the latter, it must be said, more often in opposition than in government. It was perhaps counterintuitively, after I lost what was most probably an inappropriate decision back in 2010 to contest the deputy leadership of the Liberal Party in the Senate against him, that George and I started to develop a very close personal and professional relationship. I think that we respected in each other the way we engaged in that contest, and, as I said, we very much enjoyed each other's company as we discussed policy and politics in the months and years that followed.

In the broad church which is the Liberal Party, George is a leading representative of the classical liberal tradition. I have heard him describe himself as a Deakinite. It won't surprise colleagues to hear me say that I approach policy and politics from a more conservative point of view, so there was always much scope for discussion about all sorts of policy and political issues—but always conducted with good humour and in a spirit of friendship. For that, I thank you, George.

It is often taken for granted when we hear someone say that politics, at its core, is a battle of ideas, but few have engaged more vigorously in the genuine battle of political ideas than Senator Brandis. From his student days to the high public office of Attorney-General of the Commonwealth and Leader of the Government in the Senate, Senator Brandis has always brought incredible intellect, conviction, energy and well-considered philosophical principle to his engagement in the battle of political ideas. Senator Brandis has represented the great state of Queensland in this chamber for nearly 18 years—eight years as part of the coalition leadership group. Ten of those years were in the Attorney-General's portfolio, firstly for six years in opposition and then, since the election of the coalition government in 2013, as the Commonwealth Attorney-General. By any measure, that is an incredible achievement.

His political career started all the way back, as he has alluded to, at the tender age of 16, when he made the very wise decision to join the Liberal Party. At the University of Queensland he attained first-class honours in both Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Law degrees. He was awarded the distinguished Sir Rupert Cross Prize for evidence. And his arts honours thesis, believe it or not, was modestly titled 'An Interpretation of the Ideology of the Liberal Party of Australia'. With a title like that for an arts honours thesis, it should have been obvious to all what was to come: an outstanding, distinguished career of public service, culminating in his becoming one of the most senior and most respected leaders in Australian politics.

But first, before pursuing his political career, Senator Brandis went on to study a Bachelor of Civil Law from Magdalen College at Oxford in 1983, joining a pool of alumni that includes many other distinguished current and former Australian public servants and members of the bar. Upon his return to Australia, Senator Brandis pursued a legal career with distinction. After a brief time as a solicitor in Brisbane he was called to the Queensland bar in 1985 and was involved in a series of significant cases before both the Federal and High Courts of Australia. Senator Brandis's years of eminent service would later see him appointed as Senior Counsel. I note that Senator Brandis, with the power vested in him as the Attorney-General, was able to change this to Queen's Counsel in 2013, an obvious reflection of his love of the English common law tradition, even in titles.

Senator Brandis entered the Senate, filling a casual vacancy, back in May of 2000. After a number of years of then Prime Minister John Howard carefully reviewing his performance, he was appointed to what all thought was the most suitable position in the ministry that he could be appointed to, his dream job: the Minister for the Arts and Sport.

By some analysis, considering his contribution as the Australian minister for sports on a time-served-to-impact ratio, there's no doubt in my mind that Senator Brandis was one of Australia's greatest sports ministers. In his mere 10 months in the portfolio in 2007 he worked with the Australian Football League and other codes to introduce what are now the world's most rigorous standards regarding the use of illicit drugs in professional sport. In his first successful foray on the global stage, George outsmarted the world's national sports bodies to get the first Australian appointed as president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Hon. John Fahey, an illustrious former finance minister of this parliament. And they say that the training we receive doing the numbers in the Liberal Party doesn't serve any purpose!

In the arts portfolio, no doubt Senator Brandis's greatest passion, he again made an outstanding contribution. In a short 10 months in 2007, he successfully shepherded a series of major reforms through the budget and the parliament to expand Australia's vibrant screen industry. He created our national agency, Screen Australia, and secured the sustainability of local production, including documentary and domestic filmmaking. When he returned to the arts portfolio in 2013 he took steps to make arts funding more readily available to the community arts sector and ensured new players were able to access funding to tour overseas, demonstrating the breadth of excellence in the Australian arts sector. His passion exceeded the boundaries of the portfolio. In 2015, after he had left the arts portfolio, he followed the Australian World Orchestra to Chennai on his own initiative and at his own cost to observe and celebrate their tour de force, led by maestro Zubin Mehta. He has been an avid proponent of Australian art and culture across the globe, a passion I am confident he will continue to pursue during his next endeavours in London.

Turning to his remarkable contribution as Attorney-General, I wish to pay foremost tribute to his tireless commitment to the safety of the Australian people. In the face of a deteriorating global security environment and the advent of a new generation of terror threats, Senator Brandis marshalled the full weight of his legal and political expertise and stewarded world-leading antiterrorism laws that have given the men and women of our intelligence and police communities the statutory tools that they need to carry out their vital work. Much of his most important work on security issues has been outside of the public eye, ranging across challenges like Operation Sovereign Borders; fallout from the conflict in Iraq and Syria; the rise of ISIL, including their surrogates in the Philippines; terrorist cells and lone wolves in Australia; and humanitarian crises in South-East Asia. In the three years since Australia's terror threat level was elevated, Senator Brandis has overseen the passage of nine tranches of national security laws—four of these in the last year alone. Thanks to these laws our police and security agencies are better placed to keep Australia safe. Australia has been very well served by having as Attorney-General a thinker steeped in the classical liberal tradition at a time when the right balance had to be struck in modernising antiterrorism laws and administrative arrangements to fight terror.

In his first speech in this place Senator Brandis cited as the most fundamental duty of government 'the obligation to protect the weak from the strong'. Be it via the measures that Senator Brandis helped pass that prevented the return of foreign terror fighters or the new anti-espionage and foreign interference reforms that he helped to craft in the closing weeks of last year, it is clear that this concern has remained front of mind throughout the course of his service. Because of Senator Brandis's efforts, the Australian people are today safer and more secure.

Senator Brandis has also played a particularly important role in national debates on data retention laws, family law reform and the reform of the court system at a time of constrained resources. Further, he has been influential over several years in the debate on the shape of potential reforms to marriage laws. I also wish to emphasise Senator Brandis's staunch advocacy for the protection of constitutional government and those liberties that underpin all others: freedom of thought, speech and expression. This, too, was central to the agenda that he outlined upon his entry into the Senate, and Senator Brandis's willingness to champion these causes should not be forgotten. As chief law officer of the Commonwealth, Senator Brandis has also been passionate about his core responsibilities for stewardship of the justice system, including recruiting the best minds to our highest courts and maintaining important laws for the administration of justice, family law, freedom of information, and bankruptcy.

It is in the role of Attorney-General, and also of Leader of the Government in the Senate, that we have best seen his raw and determined devotion to the principles of justice, fairness and liberalism. In recent times Senator Brandis's great oratory in this place at times of pressure and stress, whether relating to same-sex marriage or to equal opportunity and antidiscrimination, has made us as colleagues and legislators and the listening public stop and consider the full impact of our deliberations and decisions.

Senator Brandis's great grace and high principles are celebrated today by those of us in this place but also by the more than 90 of George's family, friends and former staff who have come from all over Australia to be in the gallery for this occasion. His staff have served him with loyalty and good humour, and Senator Brandis has touched on this in his remarks. They have felt part of George's family and his purpose in this place. He enjoys their friendship, which is not always a given in Australian politics. In fact, I spoke to one of the seasoned coalition staffers who have worked for a number of coalition ministers over the years about whether George might have been the best minister that particular staffer had worked for. She replied, 'Well, it depends on what you mean by 'best minister'. Was he the most intelligent, the most effective politician, the most capable legislator, the most dedicated team player, the most deft cabinet contributor?' She replied, 'He was all of those things but, above all, if I had to be stuck on island with one of you,'—that is, one of us—'George is the one I would take, for his good stories and great company, ideally over a bottle of champagne or an endless gin and tonic.' It is up to you to guess who I may have spoken to.

George will be missed greatly by all of us in this place. We will miss his brilliance, his wit and, above all, his great stories and his laughter, which on a good day can be heard from one end of this chamber to the end of the other place. I certainly was able to hear it from time to time in the office next door. As I observed earlier, Senator Brandis has been an insightful proponent throughout his life on the topic of political liberalism. I would not be surprised if over the years ahead we find he has a few more books on it still in him. I've got a few spots left in a bookshelf in my office! It is fair to say that with his departure, this place will come to miss that extra degree of intellectual depth.

George, over the past nearly 18 years as a senator, with five years as a minister—over three governments, as you said—you have made a remarkable contribution to the life of the Senate and Australia at large. Your contribution, George, to public life has been marked by a strength of belief, passion and consistency. It has been a real privilege to work with you in recent years, not only as your deputy leader in the Senate and a fellow minister but as a valued friend and colleague. However, your service is not over. The diplomatic post of High Commissioner to the United Kingdom is one of the most consequential that any Australian can occupy. Many of your predecessors remain some of our nation's most distinguished diplomats, and I have no doubt that you will pursue your new role with the same energy, intellect and love of country that has informed your time in this place. In these uncertain times, it is so valuable to both Australia and the United Kingdom that Senator George Brandis will be bringing his experience and talents to bear as a linchpin in the relationship between our two countries. We wish you, George, and your family all the best for your future endeavours and we thank you for your many years of service.