Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(a), I seek an explanation from the Attorney-General, Senator Brandis, as to why questions numbered 163 to 171, which I placed on notice on 5 October 2016, remain unanswered.

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

They remain unanswered because answers are still being prepared.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Under standing order 74(5)(c), I move that the Senate take note of the minister's failure to provide the answer requested.

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

Point of order, Madam Deputy President, that motion cannot be moved, because I have not failed to provide an answer. I have just given an answer. The senator may not be satisfied with the answer; he may wish to criticise the answer; but it is wrong in fact to say that I have not answered his question, when you have just heard me do so.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We could have a semantic argument about whether the Attorney-General has answered the question or not, but I am happy to rephrase the question. Under standing order 74(5)(c), I move:

That the Senate take note of the minister's failure to provide an explanation.

The questions on notice that I asked, to which the Attorney-General has failed to give an explanation, relate to the scandalous appointments made by this Attorney-General to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal on election eve this year. It is yet another in a long series of stuff-ups from probably the most accident-prone Attorney-General that this country has ever seen. Of course, there is such a long list of stuff-ups but I will remind the Senate of some of them. This Attorney-General has on at least two occasions misled this chamber, first of all with his statements in relation to the letters from the man responsible for the Lindt Cafe siege, Man Monis, and secondly more recently this Attorney-General has misled the Senate, and been found to have done so by a Senate committee, in relation to his behaviour concerning the Solicitor-General. That, of course, related to the Attorney-General's attempt to restrict the independence of the Solicitor-General and the Attorney-General's false claims to have consulted the Solicitor-General in the making of that direction.

On at least two occasions this Attorney-General has misled the Senate. We all know that the punishment for that, admitted by none other than this Prime Minister, is that this Attorney-General should resign. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for this Attorney-General to show this Senate the respect that it deserves by tendering his resignation.

This Attorney-General has also had the rare achievement of having been censured by the Senate in relation to the disgraceful conduct by him and other coalition senators in relation to the President of the Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs. I know that very soon we will have yet another show trial of Professor Triggs convened for coalition senators to do their dirty work again.

But what I am mainly talking about today is another stuff-up from this accident prone Attorney-General, and that is in relation to his scandalous appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal just before this year's federal election. I asked a number of questions on notice around the time of Senate estimates this year to the Attorney-General concerning media reports about appointments that he had made to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal which, just coincidently, seem to favour a number of former LNP or Liberal Party donors, staffers, candidates and members of parliament. It did seem, when you looked through the list of appointments that were made by the Attorney-General to the AAT just before this year's election, that having an LNP or Liberal Party card or having been a staffer, a member of parliament or a donor was a pre-requisite—certainly a great advantage—in getting yourself appointed to the AAT by this Attorney-General. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for answers from the Attorney-General to some fairly basic questions about whether he had ever met with those appointees or had met or spoken to senior LNP officials about those appointments. It seems that the Attorney-General has not yet had the opportunity to get around to answering those very questions.

I think it is important to give the Senate a little bit of history about these appointments, because I am aware that not everyone was a member of that Senate committee as I was and is not necessarily familiar with the process and what occurred. A number of things emerged from that Senate estimates hearing, the first of which is that, when it comes to appointments to be made to the AAT, in 2015 the Attorney-General was party to a new protocol which set out the process which should be followed in relation to appointments to the AAT. The idea, when you look at that protocol, is that there should be a process of cooperation between the president of the AAT and the Attorney-General before an appointment is made. Reviewing this protocol: it is a very good process, it is a very transparent process, that allows the president of the AAT to have input into what appointments are required and who are the appropriate people to be appointed. Of course, it does leave the final recommendation to the Attorney-General, and the final decision to cabinet, as is appropriate.

In essence, the steps that this protocol sets out for appointments to the AAT require the president of the AAT to supply the Attorney-General with an indication of what the tribunal's needs will be in terms of new appointments and reappointments. The Attorney-General indicates which positions do not require public advertisement because the Attorney-General has determined suitable people to fill those appointments—and we will come back to that. But it is very clear that, in general, what should occur in relation to appointments to the AAT is that the Attorney-General should seek an expression of interest for those appointments by public advertisement. The purpose of that, as is the case with many government appointments, is to give the widest possible number of people who are qualified for these roles the opportunity to indicate an interest and to ensure that Australia is calling on its best minds, whoever they may support politically, to take up these very important and very highly paid roles.

The protocol says that 'the secretary of the Attorney-General's Department will establish a selection committee that will include the president of the AAT, or their nominee; a representative of the Attorney-General; and the secretary of the department, or the secretary's nominee'. Again, that is a very fair, transparent and rigorous selection process, as you would expect for highly paid important public sector positions like members of the AAT. Only at the end of that process—at the end of the president providing the A-G with their assessment of what appointments are needed, at the end of going through an EOI process to cast a very wide net as to possible appointees, at the end of setting up a selection committee which interviews and vets people—is the Attorney-General to recommend appointments for cabinet's consideration. As I said, that is a very transparent and fair process and one that I commend to the Senate.

Unfortunately, what we learnt at Senate estimates this year was that the Attorney-General flagrantly ignored his own protocol, his own fair and transparent process for coming up with appointments to the AAT. And not only that; it was very clear from the evidence presented at that Senate estimates committee that the Attorney-General not only did not follow that protocol but completely subverted the process in order to get his own mates and mates of the LNP or the Liberal Party into these very well remunerated and responsible positions. Again, I think it is important to remember that these appointments did not come at any moment in time; they were made one day before this year's election was called. I am not sure whether that was because the Attorney-General was concerned about the government's chances at the election and felt a desperate need to get mates of the LNP and the Liberal Party into these positions before they might have missed that opportunity. I am not sure whether people had recently finished up as staffers and needed new jobs to be guaranteed, or whether donors needed to be rewarded. But, for whatever reason, a very curious number of appointments—and I will come to that shortly—were made by the Attorney-General, without having gone through his own process, one day before the election was called.

In total the Attorney-General made 76 appointments to the AAT one day before the election was called. You might ask: how much was the selection process followed by the Attorney-General? What was revealed at Senate estimates was that not one of those 76 appointments that were made by the Attorney-General one day before the election went through the selection process and the selection committee that was established under the protocol. The Attorney-General's Department gave evidence at the estimates hearing that it was not asked about the qualifications of these 76 employees. Despite the fact that there is supposed to be a process for people to give EOIs and have their qualifications vetted, on this indication it appears that the qualifications and experience of these appointees were not relevant to the job whatsoever. Of course, what we learnt was that there were certain other qualifications that were required, and that is favouritism, by many, towards the Liberal Party.

The department gave evidence that it did not come up with the names of the 76 AAT appointees. Ordinarily, the department would be involved and would be asked for advice about who would be appropriate appointees to the AAT. On this occasion, the Attorney-General's own department did not come up with the list of names. It was only as we got into the late-night session at that Senate estimates that the truth became very clear. When asked who came up with the list of names of those 76 people to be appointed to these highly paid, responsible positions on the AAT, the answer from the department was that, just as we all suspected at the beginning of the day, that list came from the Attorney-General.

That is really not much of a surprise when you review the names, experience and background of the 76 appointees. With a little bit of research, we found that 21 of the 76 appointees were ex-Liberal Party donors, members of parliament, candidates or staffers. That is nearly a third of these appointees. There was not really any consideration given to whether they had legal qualifications or whether they had experience that was appropriate to the sorts of decisions that they would need to make as AAT members, but they ticked a very important box in the Attorney-General's new selection process—and the box that they ticked was that they were former Liberal Party donors, MPs, candidates or staffers. It seems that, if you were able to tick that box, you got a much bigger advantage in getting appointed.

Time does not permit me to go through the experience of all 21 of these appointees, but I think it is important to highlight the experience of some of the more celebrated appointees that this Attorney-General found his way clear to appoint to the AAT. The one who has attracted the most attention is Mr Theo Tavoularis, a former solicitor and criminal defence lawyer in Queensland—my own home state. It became clear from media reports that Mr Tavoularis represented the Attorney-General's own son in court. When it was put to the Attorney-General, he said that he could not remember whether legal fees that were paid by his son were discounted, whether there was a further favour made to Mr Tavoularis in addition to his appointment to the AAT—

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're a real grub!

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, you know all about that. We also found that Mr Tavoularis donated to the LNP in the lead-up to the 2013 election. He had quite a good track record and had done many favours for the LNP in Queensland. Now he has been rewarded with the princely sum of $370,000 per annum for five years. His appointment to the AAT will go for five years. That is quite a reward for services rendered to the LNP in Queensland.

Dr Denis Dragovic is a failed former Liberal Party preselection candidate. He failed in his bid for Liberal Party preselection in the electorate of Goldstein in Victoria, he failed in his bid for the Liberal Party Senate ticket in Victoria, but he did not fail when it came to being appointed to an even more financially rewarding position on the AAT. Dr Dragovic has really hit the jackpot. He may not have got into the Senate, and he may not have got into the House of Representatives, but he is going to be receiving $300,000 per annum for seven years. That is even longer than a full Senate term, so I think he has done pretty well out of this arrangement.

The one that I am most interested in is Mr John Sosso, who all of us from Queensland know has a very long political history in Queensland. As long as coalition governments have been in power in Queensland in my lifetime, Mr Sosso has been one of their favoured people. He is a good example of the type of person who this Attorney-General considers appropriate to exercise a position of responsibility and independence on the AAT. Mr Sosso was the director-general of the Queensland Department of Justice and Attorney-General under the Newman government. He was fired after the commendable election of the Palaszczuk government, but he was appointed as the director of the Justice and Attorney-General's Department under the only Attorney-General from Queensland who I could possibly imagine to be worse than this Attorney-General, and that is Jarrod Bleijie, the trumped-up conveyancing clerk from Kawana.

An opposition senator interjecting—

Is he pompous? He is pompous.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, on a point of order?

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I know Jarrod Bleijie—he would not worry at all about an attack from this sort of senator—but the rules of the Senate do require that members of parliament in other places be referred to properly. This half-hearted attack by this ambulance chaser—

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Watt did actually refer to him as an Attorney-General—

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I did.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

but I remind all senators of the need—

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He was also known to us in state parliament as the conveyancing clerk for Kawana, so perhaps that is a more appropriate way to refer to him, as well as 'the former Attorney-General'. Mr Sosso oversaw that department under former Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie and oversaw a range of controversies involving a tender that was provided to a company to run boot camps. Mysteriously, that company was an LNP donor. He oversaw the implementation of the VLAD laws, which were supposed to be about combating bikie gangs in Queensland. Those laws have been spectacularly unsuccessful: not one conviction has been recorded against a bikie. All they really came up with was the idea of putting bikies in jails in pink jumpsuits, which is something no-one really ever understood. Mr Sosso was also the director-general of that department when it and the Attorney-General had a spectacular falling out with the Queensland judiciary over, among other things, their appointment of Justice Tim Carmody as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. I am interested that someone who presided over the Department of Justice and Attorney-General in Queensland at a time when there was a failure to understand the separation of powers and the importance of an independent judiciary now finds himself on a tribunal.

Mr Sosso's background with the Queensland LNP and National Party goes much further back than that. He also served within the legislation and policy branch in the justice department during the premiership of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. He advised the National Party Attorney-General during the Fitzgerald inquiry. Mr Fitzgerald, one of Queensland's most outstanding justices and legal figures ever, was highly critical of the role Mr Sosso played at the justice department when he served there during the Fitzgerald inquiry. He went on to have many other dealings and appointments under Queensland National Party governments, and now he has been rewarded further by this Attorney-General for more service by being appointed to the AAT for seven years.

We have also had Ms Saxon Rice, the former LNP member for Mount Coot-tha for one term, who has been appointed to the AAT for seven years. Ms Ann Brandon-Baker—ex-chief of staff for Scott Morrison, the current Treasurer—was appointed to the AAT for five years. Louise Bygrave—a former staffer to Tim Wilson, the member for Goldstein, when he was the Human Rights Commissioner—is now appointed to the AAT for five years. Mr Michael Manetta, who unsuccessfully ran for the South Australian parliament in 2014 for the Liberal Party, is appointed to the AAT for five years. Ms Adrienne Millbank, a researcher a Monash University who has called for Australia to abandon the UN convention on refugees, is now going to be appointed to the AAT. I am not sure whether she will be handling migration matters—one would only hope not—with that kind of attitude. They are only some of the 21 appointees with very clear links to the Liberal Party as either ex-donors, members of parliament, candidates or staffers.

In conclusion, it is very important that the Attorney-General promptly answer these questions on notice to advise the Senate of any dealings that he personally had with these appointees. We already know that 21 of these 76 appointees have very clear links to the Liberal Party or the LNP in Queensland for past services, for past donations or as past members of parliament, staffers or candidates. That was the only requirement they needed to fill in order to gain appointment to the AAT one day before the election. As I have already indicated, a number of these people are going to be holding these very responsible positions which really determine the rights of Australians all around the country. They are going to be being paid, in some cases, more that $300,000 a year for each of the seven years that they are going to be appointed. But we still have not had any clarification from the Attorney-General about the qualifications that these people held, about the experience they held or, indeed, about whether he had personal contact with any of them before he miraculously came up with a list of names that was presented to his department.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Watt, resume your seat. Senator Brandis, a point of order?

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

The point of order is this: it is not a debating point, given the motion that the senator has moved. The senator has said that there has been no explanation as to the qualifications of these people. Most of his speech, indeed, has been directed to asserting or implying that they were not qualified, which is not true. My point of order is that the questions concerning which an explanation was sought of me do not inquire of their qualifications.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I think it still goes to the fact it is a debating point. Thank you, Senator Watt.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I was saying, it is critical that the Senate is provided with answers by this Attorney-General, in particular about the contact that he personally had with each of these appointees. I note that a number of them actually do have quite an extensive background with the Liberal Party, the National Party or the LNP in the Attorney-General's own state of Queensland. I think we would all be interested to know about his level of personal contact with these people.

In wrapping up, this is yet another example of an accident-prone Attorney-General. Canberra is rife with rumours about the Attorney-General being moved on in a pre-Christmas reshuffle. There are rumours up and down Queensland about people jockeying for his Senate role. Madam Deputy President, you can really easily understand why when you reflect on the fact that he had repeatedly misled this Senate, he has been subject to a censure motion and now has made scandalous AAT appointments. (Time expired)

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a disgusting and sad presentation by someone who claims, unfortunately, to be a senator for my state of Queensland. It is no wonder the people of a Brisbane electorate got rid of Senator Watt when he represented them in the state parliament. They clearly understood that their representative was worthless and even worse than that. Not only was that speech the sort of speech that brings the political system into disrepute, but certainly Senator Watt, as a newcomer, is adding to the disdain with which most Australians hold their politicians.

Madam Deputy President, you only have to listen to that speech to understand why the Australian public holds politicians like Senator Watt in such low esteem. He is a hack from the Labor Party. He was a union bully. He worked for the disgraced Premier of Queensland, Anna Bligh. He then went into parliament, as happens with union bullies and Labor Party hacks. He went into the state parliament, but could not even hold his seat in a very safe Labor seat. He was thrown out.

Then, to add insult to injury, do you know, Madam Deputy President, what he did? He got the faction to do over Senator Jan McLucas. Senator McLucas and I had our disagreements on policy issues, but she was a serious, sincere and honest senator. She would come into this chamber and she would make points. What I particularly liked about her, of course, was that she was from northern Australia. But Senator Watt got his union thugs to do her over. She missed out on the preselection and was replaced by Senator Watt. Not only did he not come North Queensland—he came from Brisbane—but he has recently announced with great gusto that he is moving out of Brisbane and going further south down to the Gold Coast. Would you believe it? On the weekend I fortunately happened to be talking to someone in Brisbane and they told me he has his office down in the Gold Coast pretending he is there, but he has made it clear he is not going to move from his house in the leafy suburbs of Brisbane.

I would not justify this debate by going through the long list of Labor politicians and supporters who were appointed to AAT positions. Some had qualifications, most did not. I might say—without naming her, Senator Watt—that there was a Labor senator sitting exactly where you are sitting now—

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You could not remember her name the other night!

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do remember her name, but I am not going to announce it. I will give you the initials: L.K. I do not want to denigrate people who are currently serving members of the AAT, nor do I want to go through a long list of Labor appointments of former Labor hacks, union hacks and people who were failed candidates—and you might well qualify yourself there, Senator Watt—to these positions. I will not dignify this debate by going through that; it does not serve the interests of justice and the important work that the AAT does.

I will mention the name of one former Labor parliamentarian, and that is the president of the AAT—none other than the honourable Duncan Kerr, who was, for many years, a member of the Labor Party in this parliament. But of course Senator Watt does not want to hear about this, so he will leave now when I tell him that the boss of the AAT, the president of the tribunal, is none other—

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy President, on a point of order: the reason I am leaving the chamber is that I have a very important meeting with Pacific islanders who are threatened by climate change.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is not a debating point.

Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would rather it not be noted on the Hansard that I am frivolously leaving.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is a debating point.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Watt, I think the sooner you leave the better it will be for the institution of the parliament and, certainly, for debate in this chamber.

Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Senator Macdonald, I have allowed a fair bit of liberty with this debate, but your remarks should be made to the chair.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Madam Deputy President. I am pleased to see that you and one of your colleagues sitting in the chair are now enforcing that rule, which, as I said to one of your colleagues this morning, is something that I think should be enforced. It never is, but I am pleased to see that you are doing it, as was one of your colleagues earlier.

The President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, Mr Duncan Kerr, was a former Labor member of the House of Representatives for—what?—nine or 12 years. Was Senator Watt referring to him in his accusations and his baseless tirade about people who were appointed? He talked about Mr Sosso, I think—and I must say, as someone who has been involved in the Liberal Party in Queensland for over 50 years, I have never met Mr Sosso. In fact, I do not think, I regret to say, that I have ever heard of him. But I have just been alerted to the fact that he was Director-General of the Queensland Department of Justice. He is a distinguished lawyer in his own right and he is now a presidential member of the Australian Native Title Tribunal. He is a very distinguished lawyer and, if he happens to have some connection with the LNP, which I am not aware of, he is not appointed for that; he is appointed because he is a distinguished lawyer with a very significant background in administration of justice who also, as I say, currently sits as a presidential member of the Australian Native Title Tribunal. This is the sort of person that Senator Watt, in a coward's castle in this chamber, wants to denigrate.

Senator Watt went on further to denigrate a Dr Dragovic—again, having been round the Liberal Party for a long time, I am sorry to say I have never heard of—who is a consultant to several United Nations agencies. He is a very distinguished man. He is a person who has devoted his life to helping the causes that the United Nations stands for. Yet here you have someone of Senator Watts's newness standing and denigrating these people who have made a lifetime contribution to our society.

Senator Watt mentioned a number of other people. He mentioned someone who I think, as I understood him, used to work for Mr Tim Wilson, the current member for Goldstein, when he was a human rights commissioner—and suddenly that makes this person unfit for appointment. I could think why other people associated with the human rights tribunal might be unfit for appointment, but I would not have thought that a distinguished person with a legal background, who happened to have worked for someone who is now a member of parliament, would be disqualified from appointment to the AAT.

If anyone was listening to this debate seriously—and I certainly hope very few Australians were listening to Senator Watt—can I mention that most of the 76 appointments that Senator Watt made such a big thing about were reappointments of existing AAT members who had been appointed in the past by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government and, I suspect, some by the Abbott government. They were reappointments whose terms expired on the same day and on the recommendation of the president of the AAT, the honourable Justice Kerr—a former Labor politician, but a very fine and distinguished legal mind. A fair number of those 76 were existing members of the AAT who were being reappointed, as I mentioned, on the recommendation of the president, former Justice Kerr.

Can I diverge a little wider and congratulate Senator Brandis on the wonderful job he has done as Australia's Attorney-General. I have been, as I say, in this place for quite a long time, and I do not think I have seen a more fit and able person to hold the role of Attorney-General than Senator Brandis. Senator Watt would have you believe that a Senate committee made a finding of 'misleading', but can I tell anyone who might be listening to this that this Senate committee comprised a majority of Labor and Greens senators who, before they had heard the first bit of evidence, had prewritten the report of this dodgy committee—this dodgy committee that had a majority of three Labor members and one Green member.

If anyone is interested in reality, they should look at the dissenting report of that committee, which found that most of the views of the majority of the committee—the three Labor members and one Green member on the committee—were simply irrelevant. It was quite clear from those hearings that the Attorney did not mislead the parliament. There was not a skerrick of evidence of that. In fact, the evidence all quite clearly showed that the Attorney—as he has said in this chamber—had consulted the Solicitor-General on the issue. And not only was the evidence quite clear, but there is documentary evidence from the Secretary of the Attorney-General's Department: they actually sent a brief to the Attorney saying, 'go ahead with this direction,' and, 'you have done the required consultation'—the consultation he was required to do. Yet in spite of that, the majority of three Labor members and one Greens member on this committee said that the Attorney misled the Senate by saying that he had consulted—when not only did the evidence show he had consulted but the written advice from the department confirmed that he had consulted and that the current consultation was correct.

Senator Watt was not directly on point, but he was speaking on this so I will go there: he mentioned that there is going to be the 'show trial' of Professor Triggs. I do not know what is a show trial about it. Those of you who read about these things in the newspapers might remember that at the estimates committee hearing, I particularly said to Professor Triggs: 'Now, in this interview with Ramona Koval, you have allegedly said these things'—and I went through the recorded interview of Ramona Koval with Professor Triggs. I wanted to ask Professor Triggs why she said in this interview, 'how dare they question me'. I also wanted to find out from Professor Triggs what she meant when she said, 'I could have destroyed them'. She was referring to the Senate committee, I think; I was keen to know whether she was going to destroy us physically or politically or in what way. I was very keen to hear about that. I was also keen to follow up on a few other things that were said in that interview. She called the Senate committee 'uneducated and unintelligent'—I know she is talking about me, and I accept that. I am uneducated. I did not have the opportunity of going to the flash schools and universities that most of those on the other side did. But I wondered who else she was talking about. I wanted to ask her about those things. But could I ask her about them? No—because she said to me, 'that is not an interview I did, that was the subeditor who put all those things in, so I do not have to answer them because they are not my words'.

Unfortunately for Professor Triggs, it just so happens that The Saturday Paperand I might say, most people would not have heard of The Saturday Paper, but it is well known as being a rag of the Left—actually physically recorded the interview—and good luck to The Saturday Paper; I must try and get a copy and read it sometime. They came forward because Professor Triggs had not only misled the Senate committee but she had impugned the professional reputation of a journalist. And naturally, The Saturday Paper and the journalist took umbrage at that –so would I—and good on them. So they actually produced the tape recording where Professor Triggs said exactly what was in that report. It was not a question of not answering my questions because she did not say those things; she deliberately said she did not say them, so therefore we could not ask her.

Senator Watt talks about a show trial. It will not be a show trial. I will simply ask Professor Triggs, first of all, why she deliberately misled the Senate. And secondly, I will say: 'Why do you think that you—as the only public servant—the only person on the taxpayers' payroll who comes to estimates committees and thinks this—do not have to answer questions?' Now maybe she did not mean that when she said, 'how dare they question me'. Maybe she meant something else. But I want to give her the opportunity of answering those questions. As for Senator Watt's show trial: we will simply be giving Professor Triggs the opportunity of explaining why she misled the Senate—why she denied that she had said those words—when The Saturday Paper actually had the physical recording of her saying those words.

Madam Deputy President Lines, I have diverted, as did Senator Watt, from the substantial instance he was talking about. But can I come back to this point: the AAT is a very important part of the administration of governance and justice in our country. Most of the appointments that Senator Watt railed against were reappointments of previous AAT members appointed by the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, or, I assume, by the Abbott government, although I am not sure of that. They were reappointments.

Senator Watt was able to talk about 21 of the 76. But, in his unfortunate and childish tirade in this chamber, he did not distinguish between the 21 and the other 55. He lumped the whole 76 into the same category. Some of them are formerly well-known people in the Labor Party and the union movement. I am not sure who runs the Labor Party in the Senate now but, Madam Deputy President, I think it would be useful to counsel Senator Watt on using this chamber to denigrate people who are doing a wonderful job. I have mentioned just two people who are distinguished lawyers. They may have an association with the LNP; I do not know. I do not know who was appointed and I have not seen the names, so I do not know whether they have an association with the LNP. But can I tell you this, Madam Deputy President: if they have been appointed, they have been appointed because they have distinguished legal backgrounds, or backgrounds in government, which mean that they can do a good job in the AAT—the same as Duncan Kerr, a Labor man; the same as the former senator—who I do not want to name, because she is a serving member of the AAT—but a Labor senator who sat where you are, senator, in this chamber during the time that I have been here. I did not hear Senator Watt mention her at all, or Duncan Kerr, or any of the others who are doing a good job regardless of their political affiliation in a former life.

It is a shame when it comes down to this sort of thing. Senator Brandis, of course, does not need me to defend him. Being attacked by Senator Watt is a bit like being hit with a wet lettuce leaf. But I do think that the administration of justice and the operations of our government would be better if senators would refrain from making baseless comments in this chamber under parliamentary privilege. Senator Watt, I think, is a part-time lawyer. Someone referred to him around Brisbane as an ambulance chaser; I am not quite sure what that means, but apparently he has some legal qualifications, and he should know better. I certainly hope that the leadership in the Senate will counsel him on these matters.

Senator Brandis has been an exemplary Attorney-General, a quite brilliant legal mind in his own right. He has done a wonderful job in the administration of justice and all the other things that the Attorney-General has to do in relation to national security. To have to sit and listen to 20 minutes of what we had just prior to my speaking, from a junior senator who is a failed Labor member from Queensland and who clearly has not learnt anything from this short period practising law, is very regrettable. In this chamber we have our policy debates and we sometimes even have a personal debate, but when you embark upon that sort of attack it does nothing for the standing of the senator himself, certainly nothing for the chamber and nothing for the institution of parliament. I reject everything that Senator Watt has said. (Time expired)

Question agreed to.