It has not been a terrific week for George Brandis QC. Although, to be fair, it was hardly appreciably worse than many others.
The media-magnetic Attorney-General spent much of Friday being grilled by a largely friendly Senate committee probing an unedifying public stoush he created with the Solicitor-General, Justin Gleeson.
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Why the Solicitor-General is so angry
These are four of the major points of conflict between the nation's first and second law officers.
Ideally, a freshly re-elected government with expansive ambitions and full legislative dance card might expect its Attorney-General to be getting on with that, rather than explaining past problems.
Instead, an unprecedented dispute that has garnered headlines for weeks now appeared to deepen after Gleeson revealed he had been asked to advise the Attorney-General on the composition of the Senate.
Brandis said he was "astonished" that Gleeson had revealed this sensitive assignment without his authority, and further, complained that he had not been afforded the opportunity to assert public interest immunity in order to keep it secret.
For the record, Gleeson got the rough end of the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs references committee as a brace of Queensland senators - something approximating an LNP lynch mob - weighed into the nation's second law officer as if he were a grubby political partisan, rather than an eminent independent jurist.
Notable for their woeful behaviour were the charisma-challenged Tweedledum and Tweedledee of conservative boorishness, Ian Macdonald and Barry O'Sullivan. The pair has form, having set a new low for impugning the integrity of inconvenient public officials such as Human Rights Commission Commission president, Gillian Triggs.
Not only did they suggest Gleeson had been inappropriately communicating with the opposition's shadow attorney-general, but criticised him, effectively, for answering the questions of committee members.
Brandis will survive this latest controversy if only because nothing emerged from the inquiry to prove he did not consult Gleeson - as required by law, and as he told Parliament he had - before assuming stringent gate-keeper watch over the Solicitor-General's legal work for government.
He says that dispute comes down to a simple matter of the Solicitor-General holding to a "narrow" definition of consultation compared to his broader view.
Lawyers. Words mean very precise things until suddenly, they don't.