George Brandis will appear before a parliamentary committee inquiring into a controversial direction he issued giving him a veto over legal advice from the solicitor general.
On Monday Labor renewed its attack, using question time to accuse Brandis of misleading parliament and failing to uphold the standards expected of the attorney general.
They cited the solicitor general Justin Gleeson’s submission to a Senate committee that there was no consultation with him on the direction and a letter on 11 May to Brandis making the same point.
On Monday the Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee released a schedule for a Friday hearing at which Brandis and Justin Gleeson will both spend more than an hour each giving evidence.
The manager of opposition business in the Senate, Katy Gallagher, also gave notice of an urgent motion to be debated later on Monday, that Brandis had failed to uphold the standards expected of the attorney general and had undermined public confidence in legal administration within the government.
In question time Brandis maintained he had consulted Gleeson at a meeting on 30 November in which they discussed “the matter” of arrangements to provide advice. He denied misleading parliament.
Brandis agreed that he did not advise Gleeson he intended to issue a legally binding direction and accepted that the direction was not drafted until five months later, on 20 April.
“There is a difference of view between the solicitor general and myself about whether the meeting on 30 November constituted a consultation,” he said.
“I didn’t come with a preformed view about how the issue should be dealt with. The purpose of that meeting was to listen to what solicitor general had to say to me, so we could proceed to fix the problem.”
In taking note of answers, the Labor leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, said that Brandis had misled the Senate on three occasions when he said he had consulted the solicitor general.
“And how do we know that? Because the solicitor general, the very person that is supposed to have been consulted, has said he wasn’t.”
Wong said that Brandis’s “outrageous” defence was that he “had a general chat” with the solicitor general. She suggested the connection between the meeting and direction was so indirect that he may as well have discussed “Lionel Murphy or even the weather”.
Senator Jacinta Collins argued that Brandis had been selective in his characterisation of Gleeson’s concerns before the November meeting.
She noted the solicitor general’s original complaint also included his concern Brandis was misrepresenting his advice on key issues including citizenship laws.
Wong also flagged that Labor intended to ask the Senate to tear up the direction when the inquiry concludes on 8 November.
Wong said the direction amounted to a “power grab” by Brandis to control the flow of legal advice to government departments and even the prime minister and governor general.
Brandis has said the direction merely regularises an arrangement in the Law Officers Act that the solicitor general is to “furnish his or her opinion ... on questions of law referred to him or her by the attorney general”.
However, in his submission to the inquiry Gleeson said the solicitor general is also permitted to “act as counsel” for government departments and agencies, a function he said includes the provision of legal advice.
