right to vote on women federally, a cause Garran was, in private, gently mocking of. Garran and his fellow staff aimed for a simple style of legislative drafting, a goal enabled by the fact that there was no pre-existing federal legislation on which their work would have to be based. In Garran's opinion the approach, which was put into practice many years before the similarly principled plain English movement became popular in government in the 1970s, was intended "to set an example of clear, straightforward language, free from technical jargon." Subsequent parliamentary drafters have noted that Garran was unusual in this respect for deliberately setting out to achieve and improve a particular drafting style, and that it was not until the early 1980s that such discipline among drafters re-emerged. However, Garran himself admitted that his drafting could be overly simplistic, citing the first customs and excise legislation, developed with the Minister for Trade and Customs Charles Kingston and Assistant Parliamentary Draftsman Gordon Castle, as an example of the style taken to excess. The style was also once parodied by foundation High Court Justice Richard O'Connor as follows: Every man shall wear – (a) Coat (b) Vest (c) Trousers Penalty: £100. The Attorney-General's Department also managed litigation on behalf of the government. Initially the department contracted private law firms to actually conduct the litigation, but in 1903 the office of the Commonwealth Crown Solicitor was established, with Charles Powers the first to hold the job. The other Crown Solicitors that Garran worked with were Gordon Castle (with whom he had also worked as a drafter) and William Sharwood. In 1912, Garran was considered as a possible appointee to the High Court, following the expansion of the bench from five seats to seven and the death of Richard O'Connor. Billy Hughes, Attorney-General in the Fisher government at the time, later said Garran would have been appointed "but for the fact that he is too valuable a man for us to lose. We cannot spare him." Garran worked with eleven Attorneys-General as Permanent Head of the Department. Garran regarded the first Attorney-General, Alfred Deakin, as an excellent thinker and a natural lawyer, and on occasion "[spoke] of Deakin as the Balfour of Australian politics." He was also very much impressed with the fifth Attorney-General, Isaac Isaacs, who was an extremely diligent worker, and two time Attorney-General Littleton Groom, who was "probably one of