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

As chair of the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, I present the interim report on the compliance with notice of motion No. 274.

Ordered that the report be printed.

I move:

That the Senate take note of the report.

And, in doing so, I want to speak very briefly to the report. The chamber will have an opportunity to hear from Senator Brandis when he appears before the Senate at 9.30 tomorrow morning, in accordance with the motion No. 274, where he has been asked to report to the Senate. In tabling this report this afternoon, there are a couple of matters within it that I want to draw to the Senate’s attention. We have examined the answers that the Attorney­General has a given to the committee and there are a number of questions that have not been answered. I note that the government has put in a dissenting report, and I look forward to going through that in detail. In the main, there are clearly a number of questions that have not been answered, where the minister has made a spurious claim of public interest immunity, because he has made claims that are not based on grounds accepted by the Senate.

The report quotes the Attorney­General in his response to the Senate on 23 March, where he says: '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 nor there. The fact is that, in general, such matters are not disclosed.' This is not a substantive public interest immunity claim. The committee in its report notes, 'Confidential legal advice to government are not grounds accepted by the Senate as a basis for withholding details or explanations from the Senate or its committees. Rather, the Senate requires that the minister shall 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 or the documents.' I just want to draw the Senate’s attention what are accepted public interest immunity grounds before Minister Brandis appears before the Senate tomorrow.

David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to very briefly comment on the report. I signed, on behalf of Senator Macdonald, the deputy chair of the committee, some dissenting comments from the coalition highlighting that the Attorney-General had responded to questions and highlighting also Senator Macdonald's concerns that the whole conduct of this inquiry was one that was not to the normal standard of inquiries in the Senate. He was particularly aggrieved that there were a number of occasions where hearings were scheduled that he was unable to attend. He believes it is very much a political report as opposed to a substantive report of the Senate and the coalition has certainly submitted a report dissenting from the majority's view, in this case.

Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will be very brief in my contribution. The first matter I want to speak about is claims for public interest immunity. This is a plague, at the moment, of plague proportions. The Senate is continually presented with claims for public interest immunity that are designed to deny the Senate the opportunity to do its job, one of its crucial jobs, of scrutinising the government.

Whilst I agree with the comments that Senator Pratt has made, I do feel it is incumbent upon me to point out that this problem—and it is a significant problem—is by no means limited to Senator Brandis and it is, by no means, limited to the claims for public interest immunity that Senator Brandis has made to the legal and constitutional affairs committee.

I do say to the government that many of the claims it has made, certainly since the election, in my view, do not stand up to scrutiny. They do not measure up to previous decisions of the Senate, in regard to what does and does not satisfy a claim for public interest immunity. I want to place the government on notice that they need to do a lot better in this area. Ultimately, every single one of us is here to represent the people of Australia.

Whilst there are occasions where legitimate claims of public interest immunity may be made, the simple fact is that this government over-uses that claim and, in doing so, it deliberately denies the people that we are all here to represent and the people whose taxes pay our wages the opportunity to fully understand why the government is acting across a range of areas.

The second point I want to make is to respond, just briefly, to Senator Fawcett and his comments in regard to Senator Macdonald's comments on the particular inquiry that this interim report is the subject of. Senator McDonald, at length, has attacked this inquiry and described it as—as Senator Fawcett has—a political inquiry rather than a substantive inquiry. Nothing could be further from the truth. This inquiry has diligently conducted itself. It has relentlessly pursued the truth in the matter of the Bell corporation legislation, the deal between the Commonwealth government and the then Western Australian government, the nexus between that deal and the legal directive that was tabled in this place by Senator Brandis, the nexus between that deal and the breakdown in relationship between the first law officer of Australia, the Attorney-General, and the second law officer of this country, the Solicitor-General, which resulted in the Solicitor-General resigning recently.

These are matters of great import to the country. For Senator Fawcett or Senator McDonald to suggest that an inquiry that is looking right into the heart of these matters is not a substantive inquiry, frankly, is an insult to the Senate.

I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.