Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I accept the compliments to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security from the Minister for Justice. I accept those compliments on behalf of all 11 members of the intelligence committee, a committee which I was very proud to be a member of in the last parliament. The minister is quite right to point out that there was a very cooperative approach brought by all 11 members of the committee to the work of that committee, which resulted in five reports on counterterrorism bills and some 100 recommendations, all of which, demonstrating the work of the committee, were accepted by the government.

Perhaps while we are here the minister could answer the questions I have just asked. I will explain again what the purpose of the questioning is. I wrote to the Prime Minister on Sunday, 16 October—and I am happy to provide these letters to the minister if he has not come armed with them—because there were reports that the citizenship bill was about to be used by the government and that it was about to be almost certainly the subject of a High Court challenge. This citizenship bill is the bill on which the Attorney-General of Australia misled the parliament and the intelligence committee by falsely claiming in a formal letter to me, which is annexed to the report of the intelligence committee, that the Solicitor-General had advised on the bill.

The Solicitor-General himself, in a letter dated 12 November 2015, has made clear to the Senate committee that is inquiring into the dealings between the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General that that was a misrepresentation by the Attorney-General of his advice. To get over the problem, because the Attorney-General has already misled the intelligence committee on a previous occasion, I wrote to the Prime Minister to ask him to confirm that the Solicitor-General had, in fact, advised on the new counterterrorism bill, a very difficult and unprecedented counterterrorism measure, that is before the committee and the parliament at the moment—the Criminal Code Amendment (High Risk Terrorist Offenders) Bill 2016.

The question I asked was whether or not the Solicitor-General had been asked to advise on this high-risk terrorist offenders bill. That is the question I am still asking, because Senator Brandis was asked by the Prime Minister to write back to me, which he did on 17 October—the Monday of this week—informing me that, exactly the same as the citizenship bill, the Solicitor-General had advised on some earlier draft of the high-risk terrorist offenders bill but has not, it seems, advised on the bill now before the parliament. Naturally enough, I wrote back to the Attorney-General the same day. I will read out, for the assistance of the minister, what I said: 'I seek further clarification from you that the Solicitor-General has been given the opportunity to advise not just on the draft but on the final version of the bill which is currently before the parliament and the intelligence committee.' That is the answer I am looking for. In addition, I want the minister to answer the other question which he could not answer—that is, how many of the current bills before the parliament has the Solicitor-General been given the opportunity to advise on in their final versions? I hope he has got those questions clear. I am happy to provide the correspondence if he needs it.

In the time that is available to me, in addition to those questions, I want to ask if the justice minister agrees with the new legal services direction that was made by the Attorney-General on 4 May. Can he explain why he agrees with this new legal services direction, which is unprecedented, which breaks with a convention that is 100 years old and which is disagreed with not just by the current Solicitor-General but by the former Solicitor-General Dr Gavan Griffith, who served the Commonwealth for 14 years under the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments. I could also ask the justice minister: has he ever sought the advice of the Solicitor-General without going to the Attorney-General first? If he has, why would he not support others doing the same?

There is another topic I want to go to that is different to the dealings of the Attorney-General with the Solicitor-General. It relates to the way in which this government is treating the Australian Institute of Criminology. It is effectively abolishing the Australian Institute of Criminology and merging it with the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission. This is very much a government that does not want to listen to the experts. We heard yesterday that the government is prepared to water down our gun laws in order to secure votes in the Senate for its antiworker legislation. Australians en masse were rightly horrified at the possibility that rapid-fire weapons might be let into Australia. Today, we have been hearing righteous indignation—

Mr Keenan interjecting—

And we are hearing a bit more of it now from this minister! (Time expired)

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