Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is again to the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis. I again refer to the email from Mr Greg Burton to Mr Dyson Heydon dated 12 June 2015, which includes the subject matter 'Liberal Party of Australia, New South Wales Division, Lawyers Branch and Legal Policy Branch', forwarding an invitation to the speech Mr Heydon was to deliver. Doesn't this email make it crystal clear that Mr Heydon was to be the headline speaker at a Liberal Party fundraiser?

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

As I said in answer to Senator Conroy, I do not regard a function at which no profit is made as a fundraiser.

Opposition Senators:

Opposition senators interjecting—

Stephen Parry (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order on my left! I need to hear the answer, if no-one else does.

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

Counsel for the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Mr Robert Newlinds SC, has appeared before the royal commission and has foreshadowed—as I understand what he had to say when I was watching just before question time—that he is in the process of ascertaining whether he has instructions to bring an application of the kind foreshadowed by Mr Peter Gordon from Gordon Legal, who acts for the ACTU, in a letter dated this morning and delivered to the royal commissioner this morning. That application has been adjourned to 4 pm. It would be entirely inappropriate for me to comment on the fate of a foreshadowed application, and I would counsel Senator Wong that it would be inappropriate for her to do so as well.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. Can the Attorney-General explain to the Senate how it is possible for Mr Heydon to now claim he 'overlooked' the connection to the Liberal Party in light of the plain words of this email?

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

I will let Mr Heydon's words stand for themselves. But I can tell you, Senator Wong, that Mr Heydon is a person of utterly unimpeachable personal integrity. He is one of Australia's most eminent jurists, he is an honourable man, a punctiliously honest man, and the slurs that have been cast upon his reputation by you and by others of your frontbench—including, shamefully, the shadow Attorney-General—are disgraceful.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a further supplementary question. In the light of the documentary trail released today which shows that Mr Heydon must have known this was a Liberal Party event, why has the government not required Mr Heydon's resignation on the basis of clear apprehended bias?

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

I thought you were a lawyer, Senator Wong. You should know better than that. A government does not demand the resignation of a person appointed under letters patent by the Governor-General. Were the government to do that, that would be a crime under the Royal Commissions Act—to put pressure on a royal commissioner. An application has been foreshadowed on behalf of the ACTU—not, by the way, presently a party before the proceedings—to ask the royal commissioner to stand aside on the ground of apprehended bias. Were it to be brought, and I might say that Mr Newlinds indicated before lunch that he does not yet have instructions to bring such an application, it would be dealt with by the royal commissioner in the appropriate way.