Lib-Lab ... Your nutshell guide to law and justice policies ... Dreyfus and Brandis hammer and tongs at the "great legal debate" ... Snoresville with flourishes
THE telling moment came right at the end of the Dreyfus v Brandis debate - when it came to handshake time.
Soapy Brandis flashed a shark-like grimace as he shook Mark Dreyfus' hand, his eyes remained lizard cold.
No love lost there.
What is it about the shadow, and probably next, AG that makes him such an unwinning character?
Is it because he's a "pompous git" as Penny Wong told the Senate? Is it because he seems like the nark at a schoolboy debate? Is it because he takes himself frightfully seriously?
It's all of that, rolled into one pedantic, point-scoring, pudding.
So, even before Mark Dreyfus and George (Soapy) Brandis opened their traps at the Financial Review - Norton Rose Fulbright "great legal debate", Dreyfus had won the morning, in Justinian's book.
There's no straight up-and-down vanilla reporting to be found here. For that sort of stuff you best turn to your Daily Ruperts.
The most important quality for an attorney general, in MHO, is humanity.
Dreyfus is infused with a humanitarian history, which includes his aboriginal legal work and helping to carve out some nice sounding implied constitutional free speech rights.
His ready endorsement of the legal viability of the PNG-Manus Island Solution is a blot on his copybook.
Soapy Brandis thinks the most important role for the AG is to, "protect and defend the Commonwealth".
This explains why he is distressed by what he described as former attorney general Nicola Roxon's "social engineering".
By "social engineering" he means the consolidation of five pieces of anti-discrimination legislation.
It is Brandis' pledge to have an "audit" of Commonwealth statutes to stamp out legislation that reverses the onus of proof; limits the right to silence; and constrains procedural rights.
When it comes to refugees, both the AG and his little shadow entered a kind of fantastic Narnia World - assuring us the High Court is as good as in the bag, or at least will allow sufficient wriggle room for their fanciful schemes to survive.
The Lib's promise of restoring procedural rights stops stone dead when it comes to asylum seekers.
Brandis was asked about the Coalition's policy of abolishing the right to review administrative decisions for boat arrivals - the resurrection of the Philip Ruddock's privative clause in the Migration Act.
He was confident it would pass muster because it would be drafted "to take account of High Court decisions".
He implied that if the law was challenged, as it was bound to be, then the legislation would be reconfigured to "avoid the shoals the High Court identified".
Dreyfus also was confident of the legal position of the government's PNG and Manus solution. It's something successive attorneys general have claimed to be the case, while the High Court has steadfastly been unable to see things with the same clarity.
Brandis waded in on the virtues of temporary protection visas, saying that Australia should not be seen as a permanent safe-haven for those fleeing persecution.
"Ex hypothesi, their need for protection lasts only so long as a reasonable held fear of persecution exists in the country from which they are fleeing."
Dreyfus said it was a shame Brandis didn't get onto the open cheque policy of buying back the 750,000 strong Indonesian fishing fleet.
At least we got to hear Soapy say "ex hypothesi" - a treasured moment.
He also reasserted Coalition support for the UN Refugees Convention, something upon which the loveable Scott Morrison had cast doubt.
* * *
Dreyfus and Brandis: different focus (pic: AFR)
LEGAL aid and access to justice is another sinkhole of rhetoric and Restoration flourishes.
It enabled Soapy to trot out one of his favourites:
"The Labor Party owns the rhetoric. The Liberals own the outcomes."
Dreyfus has managed to get increases for legal aid, CLCs and Aboriginal legal services in the last budget, but it's still below the 1996 level, when the first Howard government shredded legal aid spending by 50 percent.
The Opposition wants the money spent on case work, not advocacy by CLCs. This is part of Soapy's unique free speech program.
Dreyfus said this was nothing short of gagging the CLCs, to which Soapy retorted:
"It is wrong to use a preparative word like 'gag'."
He added some extra ornamentation:
"Legal aid is not properly to be seen as welfare, it should be seen as part of the rule of law."
Nice, but the truth is that legal aid will be one of the first budget victims of an incoming Coalition government.
* * *
Brandis did not pledge to keep selection panels for federal judicial appointments
JUDICIAL appointments also provided a few distracting moments.
Dreyfus said there had been an increase in the number of women in the federal judiciary, and that appointments should be reflective of the diverse nature of the community.
For Soap, "diversity is a consequence rather than a policy".
He dismissed the "honied rhetoric" of Mark Dreyfus, adding:
"If you appoint the best people you will end-up with a diverse make-up."
He didn't pledge to keep the current judicial review panels that filter most federal court appointments.
* * *
THE rest was dronesville - the national legal profession; national security; and eradicating red tape: (something that is "in the Liberal Party's DNA").
Zzzzz
Brandis managed to get in another Soapyism when responding to Labor's figures about funding of national security: "heaven forfend", said the bullfrog.
On the national profession it seems the Gillard and Rudd governments should have been nicer to Queensland's boy-wonder AG Jarrod Bjelke, because that would have stopped the Pineapple belt dropping out of the scheme.
To get the states back on board they should not be "abused or hectored". The government "shouldn't badger behind a rostrum". The shadow AG's famed charm is all that's required:
"I have the capacity to deal with those sceptical states in a friendly manner."
Soap's model for a national profession is a profession with state regulation and discipline.
It's important not to have "centralist views", although it's OK for the rest of the world to revolve around Queensland.
* * *
THE room at Norton Rose Fulbright was studded with the Creme de Potage of the legal caper.
The Vic and NSW bars were there; so too the Law and Order societies; law reformers; retired attorney general Neil Brown QC (a.k.a. Neil Diamond from Brown Valley); legal aid people; the Human Rights Commission; departments of state; academics; lawyers; reptiles of the media; the corporate law lobby; politicians; and freeloaders.
* * *
The Whitlam-Murphy ingredient missing in action
WHAT of the other law and justice policies of an incoming Abbott junta?
It's not always easy to find them. Brandis' office says the "detailed" policies have not yet been released.
From the Real Solutions pamphlet we find a series of pledges, which look as they they've been written by someone in the Young Liberals. Here they are in assorted order of excitement:
- A root and branch review of competition policy;
- Registered organisations to have the same disclosure and similar penalties as companies and their directors;
- Establish a new Commonwealth-State standing council on law and crime that will bring safety to the community and bring lawmakers and law enforcers together to develop a national focus on fighting crime;
- Protection of the media from over-regulation, with freedom of speech to ensure "our vibrant democracy remains";
- Rejection of Labor's push for increased regulation of the media, including the Finkelstein report;
- Work with the media to ensure it actively strengthens standards so they meet community expectations of journalism that Australians expect and deserve;
- Support freedom of speech, specially in relation to anti-discrimination laws.
What about the promised Royal Commission into Julia Gillard and the AWU, which would morph into a Royal Commission into the entire Labor government?
And Soapy's famous "national knife plan" and the "violent gangs squad", which were such a central part of his policies in the previous election campaign, along with 2010's Commonwealth funded CCTV cameras to combat vandalism, security patrols and graffiti cleaning brigades?
Let's trust they haven't been completely forgotten.
Truly heroic ideas are nowhere to be found. There's nothing interesting about a new approach on the republic; marriage equality; a charter of rights; a reformed legal profession open to competition with easier access and cheaper prices; a humane way of handling refugees.
That would smack far too much of Whitlamism.
If you've got a lazy hour-and-a-half you can watch the set-piece debate here. Goodnight and goodluck ...