The Brandis Speech

Yesterday in Federal Parliament Senator George Brandis made a major speech on the Thomson Case (these are the concluding paragraphs).

Is the Prime Minister satisfied that it is proper for the Australian Labor Party to contribute some $90,000 towards the member’s private defamation action against Fairfax, which claim he abandoned shortly after the court compelled the disclosure of his credit card and telephone records which appear to give the lie to his claim that his signature was forged?

Finally, it was only yesterday, when this matter was brought to light, that the member for Dobell sought to amend his register of a member’s interests by lodging with the Register of Members’ Interests for the House of Representatives a letter that identified the payment of a sum of money in May 2011 by the Australian Labor Party’s New South Wales branch, in settlement of a legal matter to which I was a party. Why was that amendment made only after its disclosure was revealed?

I have in the course of this speech suggested many questions that the Prime Minister must ask, but there is one simple question that she must answer for the Australian people: why does she continue to believe that the conduct of the Member for Dobell is acceptable, and how can she possibly continue to assert that he is doing, in her words, “a fine job”?

Source (full text): Andrew Bolt’s Blog