Two-year battle between the attorney general and his Labor counterpart, Mark Dreyfus, back before the full bench of the federal court on Friday

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

George Brandis’s diary has been back to court for a second time in the long-running battle between the attorney general and his Labor counterpart, Mark Dreyfus.

After a federal court appeal hearing in Sydney on Friday, Dreyfus again accused Brandis of wasting taxpayer money and said the attorney-general was trying to hide something by using courts in an attempt to stop the publication of parts of his ministerial diary.

The diary, Dreyfus said, contained information about who the senator would and would not meet with as decisions about budget cuts were being made in December 2013.

“People couldn’t get into see senator Brandis because, they were told, he was too busy,” he said outside court on Friday.

“It was particularly people in the legal assistance sector, people in community legal centres and particularly Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander services, whose funding was cut very savagely.”

Lawyers for senator Brandis told the hearing that a judge was wrong to have granted a freedom of information request relating to the diary and should have considered the possible substantial and unreasonable interference the ruling could place on the department.

According to Brandis’ office, it will take staff about 630 hours to fetch the information and check if the people named in the diary, those who are not journalists or political staffers, have “sensitivities” about their meeting being made public.

But neither the public – nor the shadow attorney general – are likely to get much closure from the case. Even if Dreyfus wins, Brandis will be obliged only to process an information request for eight months of his electronic diary entries.

The case began more than two years ago when Dreyfus sought access under freedom of information laws to diary entries that showed Brandis’s government-related appointments.

George Brandis challenges ruling that he must reconsider request to release diary Read more

But Brandis knocked it back on the grounds that it would substantially and unreasonably interfere with the resources of his office, arguing in part that some of his diaries were national security matters which required substantially more detailed consideration. Dreyfus appealed to the administrative appeals tribunal and categorically won.



But in a surprise move, Brandis appealed the ruling

which was made by the respected federal court judge Jayne Jagot sitting in her role as a judicial member of the tribunal.

The case is funded by the taxpayer, with advice provided by the Australian Government Solicitors, prompting Dreyfus to accuse Brandis of wasting public funds.

“I think this is a tremendous waste of taxpayers’ money,” Dreyfus said ahead of the appeal. “Senator Brandis should have processed this request at the outset and should not have wasted tens of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money.”

Publishing diary entries is not new, and they are not Brandis’s personal appointments, just government ones. The US president, Barack Obama, publishes his, as does the NSW premier, Mike Baird.

“It’s indisputably in the public interest that the appointments made by ministers are in public,” Dreyfus said. “The public are entitled to know who ministers are meeting with and how often they’re meeting.

“You would think that as the minister responsible for the FOI act he would be doing his utmost to set the example.”

To add to the unusual proceedings, Dreyfus represented himself in the proceedings. The shadow attorney general is a seasoned Queen’s Counsel, and also represented himself in the tribunal proceedings.

The matter will return to the federal court at a date to be determined.

Australian Associated Press also contributed to this report.