Senator FARRELL (South Australia—Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (15:03): I move: That the Senate take note of the answers to questions to Senator Brandis asked by the opposition. I had the pleasure the weekend before last of attending the 40th anniversary of my law school class. It was a reunion. We got together with all of those people who had been there on the day I graduated all those years ago. There were some people I had not seen for 40 years. Amongst them were some very distinguished jurists around the country. One of them, of course, was Jeffrey Goldsworthy, a professor of constitutional law at Monash University. At law school you learnt constitutional law, which was generally a first year subject. The first thing you learnt in constitutional law was about section 109 of the Australian Constitution. This is the section of the Constitution that refers to inconsistency between state and federal law. You may find circumstances where a state government might pass a law and the Commonwealth has an inconsistent law. How do you determine the issue between those two laws? The answer is section 109 of the Constitution. It says that if there is an inconsistency between a state law and a federal law, the federal law overrides the state law. I notice Senator Brandis is nodding at that assertion. So the question I ask in relation to that lengthy and detailed statement, in Senator Brandis's words— Senator Brandis: That is what Senator Wong said. Senator FARRELL: She has obviously heard the statement too. The first question I would ask Senator Brandis is, if he understood section 109—and I believe he did—why would he have said in his lengthy and detailed statement today: … one of the options I considered … was that the ATO should not intervene in the proceedings. If Senator Brandis understood section 109, he would have known automatically that the legislation that the Western Australian government purported to pass to overturn the ATO's entitlement to recover money from creditors was in breach of section 109 of the Constitution. So the question I would ask is: why did the chief law officer of this country, Senator Brandis, even contemplate not intervening in those proceedings? Of course, we asked some questions of Senator Brandis in question time. We asked: Did the Attorney-General discuss his view with anyone other than Mr Mills and Ms O'Dwyer? If so, who? We did not get any answers to that question in question time, and we certainly got no answers in the lengthy and detailed response that Senator Brandis gave us earlier in the day. We want some answers to that question. I think the Australian people need the answers to that question. Senator Bilyk: We do. Senator FARRELL: Yes, Senator Bilyk is just right. We do need the answers to those questions. Then we asked another question of Senator Brandis: did the Attorney-General provide any instructions to the Solicitor-General, this Australian Government Solicitor or the ATO consistent with his view? Again, we got no answers to that question. Again, I say that we need some answers to these questions. We never got them in the lengthy and detailed response that Senator Brandis gave. We know that the Western Australian government purported to pass these laws. They obviously thought they had a deal with the Australian government. As we now know, Ambassador Hockey had lengthy and detailed discussions with these people. But he is now in America; he is now our ambassador. We are asking sensible and straightforward questions of the Attorney-General as to what he knew and what discussions he had with particular individuals. I think the minimum this parliament owes to the people of Australia is to answer those questions. Those questions have been asked, they are on notice and we want some answers. (Time expired)