Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party, Minister for Resources and Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

It's a great privilege to stand and make some brief remarks in honour of the service that Senator George Brandis gave to the state of Queensland. I was only in this chamber for a short period of George's career. As he outlined in his contribution, we don't always see eye-to-eye on fundamental issues, but I do have a great respect for his contribution to this place, his fine intellect and the public service he has given to the people of Queensland.

George mentioned that I was happy to support him getting another term, despite our potential differences. That was not only because I respect him as a person. There are a few other reasons why I thought it was important to continue to have George as part of our team. Prime among those is that it is important to have differences in our party. I think we are stronger as a unit to have a little bit of tension, if you like, at times. It makes you sharper. There's not much point in playing tennis on your own. When you have someone else to hit the ball back, you become a little bit stronger and a little bit better at your game. I also think, ultimately, a bird needs a left wing and a right wing to fly, and that's no different for our parties. George was a fine exponent of a set of values within our Liberal-National Party that deserved to have representation. I was very happy to see him re-chosen by the LNP earlier last year.

He was also, as Senator Macdonald pointed out, a great Leader of the Government in the Senate and also a great Attorney-General. We were very lucky to have him as a representative from Queensland. I tried to find out how many attorneys-general had come from Queensland. I gave up because it was too difficult, but I don't think there would be too many. I reckon, from my short dealings with the Sydney bar last year—which I might go into later—that they'd hold onto this position pretty tightly down there in Sydney or Melbourne. I don't think they'd give it to too many people north of the Tweed. The fact that George was able to rise to those levels was indicative of his skills and qualities, and we are very proud to have had him as a representative of our state.

I was already good mates with George before I decided to take a little sabbatical last year so that the Australian legal profession could expand their understanding of the Australian Constitution. George was the first person I let know that I potentially had an issue with my citizenship. When I found out, I was walking towards the CPO offices in Brisbane. I then called my wife. I think I called the PM and the Deputy PM, and then I called George. He happened to be in the offices as well, so he was probably the first person I spoke to face to face following that particular news. I can't thank him enough for the support that he and his staff gave to me—and, indeed, the whole government, as it turned out—through that difficult process.

Most of the barristers and high-level solicitors I spoke to about this issue were, I think, always struggling to hide their excitement about this particular problem. They all seemed very excited about having this particular constitutional conundrum to look at and investigate. It reminded me of the old saying that you don't want to be the patient where the doctors are very excited about the surgery they're going to conduct on you. That's how I felt sometimes. But George did keep his excitement in check and had a great degree of empathy and helped me a lot through it.

When we were first going through these issues, up in the CPO offices, we were, of course, desperately trying to find some intelligence about Italian law. We started calling legal people about our options, and our problem became pretty apparent very quickly in that all these lawyers in Australia who had some expertise about Italian migration law were all steeped in the experience of getting people to be Italian—people who wanted to be Italian! So we had to spend a lot of time explaining, 'No, no, I don't want to be Italian.' They knew all the loopholes for how to become an Italian but not many for how to get out of it!