George Brandis vs Mark Dreyfus: Why should you care about the Attorney-General's ministerial diaries?
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Mark Dreyfus seems pretty happy this morning. After almost three years of legal mud-wrestling, he has finally got his hands on part of George Brandis' ministerial diary.
But let's face it, this has been a niche battle from the beginning.
So why should you care?
Given it has taken so long for these documents to be released, we should start by putting aside the initial aim of Mr Dreyfus' Freedom of Information (FOI) request — to see whether the Attorney-General met with representatives of the community legal sector before sweeping cuts in the 2014 budget.
This brawl has given Mr Dreyfus three years of attacks against Senator Brandis.
It has exposed the Attorney-General to three years of criticism that he is obstructive and has something to hide.
But for the taxpayer, it has also opened up the Commonwealth to thousands upon thousands of dollars in legal bills as the Senator enlisted QCs to fight this request all the way to the full court of the Federal Court and was forced to pay Mr Dreyfus' court costs.
Then there is the deep irony that an FOI initially blocked because it would take too long for the minister and his office to process degenerated into 1,090 days of debate.
The 34 pages that were handed to Labor by Senator Brandis' office late on Friday, hours before the deadline for delivery that Mr Dreyfus had set before threatening contempt of court proceedings, are a week-by-week printout of the Attorney-General's electronic diary — some of it redacted.
It is not a riveting read.
Apart from details of Senator Brandis attending performances of The Ring Cycle and having lunch with Julie Bishop at a pricey Canberra restaurant, the way in which the documents have been formatted makes it all but impossible to read large swags of the appointments.
But that is the format Labor requested.
So this tortured process has procured little beyond bragging rights.
Mr Dreyfus says the diary shows there is no evidence the Senator met with the legal assistance sector before the widely-criticised 2014 budget.
But who really knows? The meetings might actually be buried in the fine print of pages that cannot be read.
Senator Brandis' office argues some meetings are scheduled on the fly, and not always included in his diary.
Either way, if what was handed to Labor on Friday was all the Attorney-General was ever going to provide under the FOI request, the public will likely wonder what all the fuss was about.
Topics: government-and-politics, law-crime-and-justice, federal-government, australia
