Larissa Waters (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to take note of the response given to my question by the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis. I asked Senator Brandis why on earth he is contemplating silencing the community's ability to uphold the environmental laws through the courts, when his own government and ministers are prepared to ignore those laws. The Attorney made some very perplexing remarks over the weekend. As I understand it, the Attorney is in fact the first law officer of the nation. I would have thought it was his job to uphold the law. He seems now to have taken it upon himself to, instead, uphold the rights of the coal lobby and silence members of the Australian community who want our laws complied with. It is a very confusing stance taken by a man who otherwise prides himself on being a black-letter lawyer. I asked the Attorney why he was so eager to change the law to silence Australians and to promote the rights of the coal lobby ahead of the rights of the community to see their laws enforced. He, of course, did not really answer that question—it is called question time, not answer time, for a reason. I asked him when the government would start enforcing their own laws so that maybe the community would not have to do their job for them. Sadly, he did not actually respond to that question either, but what he did say was that that kind of public enforcement of our laws, our environmental laws in this particular case, was gaming the system.