Senator BRANDIS (Queensland—Attorney-General, Vice-President of the Executive Council and Leader of the Government in the Senate) (14:42): Senator Gallagher— Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting— Senator Wong interjecting— The PRESIDENT: Order! Senator Wong! Senator Ian Macdonald interjecting— The PRESIDENT: And Senator Macdonald! Senator Wong, on a point of order. Senator Wong: Mr President, I would ask that that be withdrawn. Senator Macdonald has just asserted that Mr Gleeson was a Labor appointee and that is the problem. Government senators interjecting— The PRESIDENT: Order on my right! Senator Macdonald, on the same matter? Senator Ian Macdonald: On the point or order, Mr President: Senator Wong is clearly misleading the Senate and attributing to me things I did not say. What I said was that Mr Gleeson is a Labor appointee—and that, I am sorry, is correct. The PRESIDENT: Thank you. There is no point of order on either side. Senator BRANDIS: Mr Gleeson wrote to me on 12 November last year and identified in a letter, which you have seen, a particular problem. I invited him to come to my office so that we could discuss that problem. That meeting happened on 30 November last year and we had a long discussion about that problem. At the end of that meeting I invited him to put his thoughts in writing to me, which he did 14 weeks later. I considered what he had said to me at the meeting, I considered what he had reduced to writing in his letter to me of March 2016, I sought advice from my department and I made some decisions. Mr Gleeson and I have a difference as to whether or not that process constitutes a consultation within the meaning of section 17 of the Legislation Act. Those are the metes and bounds of this difference.