Brandis loses court bid to keep ministerial diary private
The dispute between George Brandis and Mark Dreyfus began back in 2014. Photo: AAP
Federal Attorney-General George Brandis has lost his latest bid to keep his ministerial diary private, after a long-running Freedom of Information (FOI) dispute with his Labor counterpart Mark Dreyfus.
This morning the Full Court of the Federal Court in Sydney ruled against Senator Brandis, who had argued the FOI application from Mr Dreyfus would have interfered with his daily duties and taken hundreds of hours to process.
It does not mean the diary must be released immediately, rather, the FOI request has to be reconsidered.
The Commonwealth has been ordered to pay court costs.
Mr Dreyfus represented himself during the matter and said his appearance cost nothing.
“I hope [Senator Brandis] learnt a lesson from this. He’s now cost the Australia taxpayer well in excess of $50,000,” Mr Dreyfus told reporters outside the Federal Court.
“I call on Senator Brandis to now say definitively that he will not be wasting further taxpayer money by going on to the High Court of Australia, which he could potentially do.
“Instead, he should expeditiously process this request, which was always a simple request.”
Watch Mark Dreyfus speak about the decision by the full Federal Court below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbD9ZzlSHsE
A spokesperson from Senator Brandis’ office said the Attorney-General “will carefully study the decision of the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia and its implications for government”.
The dispute started in 2014, when the shadow attorney-general lodged an FOI request to inspect a printout of his counterpart’s electronic diary for the period between September 2013 and May 2014.
Mr Dreyfus’ argument was that Senator Brandis had not properly consulted with stakeholders before significant cuts to the community legal sector in the 2014 federal budget, delivered by then-treasurer Joe Hockey.
The request was for a week-by-week print out of Senator Brandis’ electronic diary.
Diary blocked over time concerns
The FOI was originally blocked by the Attorney-General’s chief of staff, who claimed it would take hundreds of hours to process because Senator Brandis would have to personally vet each and every entry before they could be released.
Not happy with that response, Mr Dreyfus took his matter to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
In December, Justice Jayne Jagot found in favour of Labor’s chief legal spokesman, but did not order the immediate handover of the diary.
Rather, the outcome was that the FOI request had to be reconsidered.
Senator Brandis appealed that decision to the Full Court of the Federal Court, with three judges hearing the matter.
Counsel for the Attorney-General argued Justice Jagot had not given weight to the amount of time it would take the Attorney-General to consult any third parties in the diary entries on whether they would object to the information being released.
