Soapy Watch

New AG to protect judges from free speech attacks ... Silence on announcements should not detract from exciting policy initiatives ... Polly Peck reports 

Brandis: keeping count of his initiatives

LAST month George (Soapy) Brandis "QC" had his first outing on the speech circuit as the brand spanking new attorney general. 

He delivered the annual Minter Ellison-Sir Harry Gibbs Lecture at his alma mater, the TC Beirne School of Law at Queensland University. 

The event was held in the Sir Llew Edwards Building on campus. 

Soapy explored the tensions between politics and the duty of an attorney general. 

He said an attorney general is "more than a politician, more than a senior cabinet minister" and declared he would restore as a function of the job the defence of the judiciary. 

Well done. Everyone was tickled pink that this neglected role of the AG would be re-established to its full glory. 

We can't wait for him to leap in and defend some wretched federal judge who has been mauled by a shock jock with whom the Soapy has schmoozed at a wedding or bar mitzvah. 

Would this mean rupturing his pocket moistening relations with giants of the media such as Michael Smith or Andrew Bolt? 

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Unfortunately the speech is not available as it will be published in the fullness of time by the UQ Law Journal. 

Not much else of the attorney's gems are being published. 

Soapy Sam Ballard, head of chambersThe AG's website has fallen silent since the eminent Queenslander was sworn to defend the faith. 

No media releases, speeches or transcripts of interviews are to be found. 

The most recent posting on the official site of the attorney general are all from the previous Labor AG, Mark Dreyfus. 

The promised new dawn of "free speech" is waiting to peep over the horizon.  

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A reader has remarked on the eerie resemblance between Soapy Brandis and Soapy Sam Ballard, who was head of the chambers where Rumpole plied his Soapy George Brandis, attorney generaltrade. 

Are they by any chance related? 

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The Australian's legal affairs section is popularly regarded as part of Brandis' PR machine. 

Soapy certainly gets a good run on those wide-open pages. 

One intoxicating item a week ago was the suggestion that the Australian Government Solicitor should be privatised, or floated on the stock exchange, or got rid of. 

"At a time when the task of repairing the federal budget looks like taking a decade, the case for disposing of the AGS looks overwhelming," said the paper's legal affairs scribbler. 

So overwhelming that once the government solicitors' liabilities are removed from the equation the whole show has an equity value of $44.3 million. 

A whopper of a money spinner for the government. 

My hunch is that that this piece of infantile nonsense was floated by Soapy to the paper's claqueur. 

Stamping out gay marriage and flogging the AGS. The brilliance of these initiatives will make this as a very special attorney generalship. 

Footnote: Word around the traps is that George wants a lot more barristers to be working for the AGS, which might have to be renamed the AGB.