George Brandis has finally released his ministerial diary and it shows no evidence he met with anyone working in the community legal sector before their funding was cut in the 2014 budget.
He handed his electronic diary to Mark Dreyfus, the shadow attorney general, late on Friday.
It took three years for him to release his diary after Dreyfus made his original freedom of information request.
The move came a week after Dreyfus threatened Brandis that he would push for contempt of court proceedings if Brandis did not release the diary immediately.
“Three years since the original freedom of information (FoI) request was made, and thousands of taxpayer dollars later – George Brandis has finally handed over his diary,” Dreyfus said on Monday.
“While the capitulation represents a victory for common sense, transparency and the principles of FoI, it is also ridiculous that it took such lengths to force the attorney general to comply with an act that sits within his own portfolio.
“In order for the attorney general to fulfil a simple request, it has taken an appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, a hearing in the full court of the federal court, and the threat of contempt.
“It is absurd, and it shows once more Senator Brandis’s unsuitability for the role of attorney general and his contempt for the rule of law.
Labor has been seeking Brandis’s diary since February 2014 to discover what consultation he held before cuts to his portfolio in the 2014 budget.
Dreyfus lodged an FoI request to inspect Brandis’ electronic diary from September 2013 to May 2014.
The Labor frontbencher has had a string of legal wins, with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal rejecting Brandis’s refusal of the request in December 2015 and finding it had to be processed. In September 2016 a full federal court decision upheld the tribunal’s ruling.
But less than two weeks ago, Dreyfus’s lawyers wrote to the Australian government solicitor accusing Brandis of “continued avoidance of his obligation to process” the FoI request because he still hadn’t released his diary.
The letter said that Brandis had had six months since the full federal court decision to process the request but “has continued to behave in a manner that is contemptuous” of the decision and the FoI Act.
It threatened if Brandis did not process the request by 20 March, Labor would seek a court order to set a deadline for the attorney general, after which it could begin contempt of court proceedings.
“No explanation for this delay has ever been proffered nor have we been given any reasons why the application has not been processed,” the letter said.
On Monday, Dreyfus said the saga – which cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars – had been a “monumental waste of everyone’s time”.
“What a waste of of taxpayers’ money, of public servants’ time, of the court’s time just because of – apparently – the attorney general’s vanity,” he told ABC radio.
He said it was notable there was no evidence in the diary that Brandis had met with legal assistance services, including Environmental Defenders Offices and Community Legal Centres, before cutting their funding in 2014.
A spokesman for Brandis said Dreyfus had been told some meetings would not have appeared in the diary because they were scheduled at short notice.
“Processing Mr Dreyfus’s request was a long and exhaustive task and had to be done on top of the attorney’s ministerial and other responsibilities,” the spokesman told the ABC.
“Appropriate redactions had to be made to the diary before it was released. Many meetings or appointments happen spontaneously or at short notice.”
