Senator JACINTA COLLINS (Victoria) (15:11): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Attorney-General (Senator Brandis) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today. This government has a serious problem with scrutiny. We have seen, in the most recent incidents and in recent times, through Senator Brandis's pattern of behaviour, senior public servants and agency heads used to cover their actions. Indeed, the additional information that Senator Brandis provided us with today about the email we were discussing in question time highlights the fact that Mr Thawley, who we have been referring to, is not only a very senior public servant; he is the most senior public servant. Indeed, he does have an office in the cabinet rooms, very close to the Prime Minister's office; but I am really not sure what the point is there. The real point is: how can we trust the Attorney-General with very serious national security matters when he hides behind a second tab to mislead parliament? The Attorney-General's Department has been forced to reveal that both they and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet allowed four sitting days before correcting the record. We heard from Senator Brandis today that he does not have much more that he can add. The opposition has obtained this email, which is evidence that Senator Brandis and Ms Bishop were told that they had misled parliament on the evening of Monday 1 June. At 5.30 pm on Monday 1 June the secretary of the Prime Minister's department, Mr Michael Thawley, called Senator Brandis's department from the cabinet office to instruct Senator Brandis's department to correct the record of misleading evidence during Senate estimates and in the house. Mr Thawley also instructed Senator Brandis's department— Senator Brandis: Mr Deputy President, a point of order: that is not what the document says. If Senator Collins proposes to refer to a document, she should quote from it without misstating what it says. The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: That is not a point of order, Senator Brandis. That is a debating point. Senator JACINTA COLLINS: Senator Brandis knows full well that he has an opportunity to debate this point. Unfortunately, in question time, he cannot answer questions. That is the problem. The most extraordinary thing about this saga is the extraordinary lengths that the government, from the Prime Minister's office down, have gone to to avoid this issue: failed answers during question time; the behaviour of Senator Ian Macdonald with the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation and References Committees; the appalling behaviour that occurred in the committee today; and countless other examples of how this government has sought to avoid dealing with this matter. The simple issue here is that there is an important matter of public scrutiny when a government goes out and refers to myself and the shadow Attorney-General as asking contemptuous questions, and when it turns out that the very basis of those questions was, indeed, accurate. And this government avoids four question times to hide their contemptuous behaviour! I am not surprised that Senator Brandis is trying to avoid exposing how outraged Ms Bishop must have been when she discovered what had occurred here. I had asked very simple straightforward questions in Senate estimates about the handling of this letter. She went way overboard in, firstly, suggesting that anyone was claiming there would have been a different outcome to the Sydney siege and, secondly, in suggesting that we were claiming that this letter might have changed that outcome. There were no contemptuous questions on this matter. Indeed, Senator Brandis himself, during estimates, did not even imply that there was anything inappropriate in those questions. But the information provided to Ms Bishop obviously ramped up this issue so far that she thought she could claim in question time in the House of Representatives that there had been contemptuous behaviour from the opposition in this matter. Well, there had not been. And now we know, courtesy of Mr Thawley, that the only contemptuous behaviour here was this government's failure to correct the record when it became very clear on that Monday that the information that Ms Bishop and, indeed, Senator Brandis had was false. This lies with the government. This lies with their problems with scrutiny and their use of public servants to cover their actions. (Time expired)