Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis. Attorney, I refer to the letter sent to the Prime Minister by the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Mr Thawley, which stated that the Monis letter of 7 October 2014 would have made no difference to the findings of the Martin Place siege inquiry. When was contact about the letter first made between the Attorney-General's Department and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet? When was the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet first advised that the Attorney-General's Department provided misleading evidence to the parliament?

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

I do not know the answer to those questions, Senator. I do not know on what date my department communicated with the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, but I will inquire.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. I refer again to Mr Thawley's letter which states that the Monis letter was one of five relevant documents that the Attorney-General's Department failed to hand over to the inquiry. Does the Attorney-General take responsibility for this failure?

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

Senator, I take responsibility for everything that happens within my department. But I might say that, although you correctly say that there were five letters, of those five letters four were in any event provided to the inquiry by other means.

Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a further supplementary question. Does the Attorney-General accept the longstanding convention that all statements provided to the parliament by ministers must be truthful? Why did reading bush poetry at estimates take priority over correcting his misleading evidence before the parliament? Why did it take one week this time? Last time it was a month.

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

Senator, I suggest you have a word to your leader and get your lines right. We heard from your leader, correctly, that it was three days. We now hear from you that it is a week. I do not know how you arrive at that conclusion, Senator Collins, but, as I told Senator Wong, when the concern was first raised with me on Monday afternoon—

Senator Collins interjecting—

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

Senator Collins, you have asked your question.

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

I asked for the matter to be inquired into urgently so that I could establish the facts. That inquiry was undertaken. The information came to me early on the Thursday afternoon. It was immediately corrected, and in sufficient good time, by the way, for Senator Wong to interrogate me about it in Senate estimates later that afternoon.