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George Henry Brandis (born 22 June 1957) is an Australian former politician. He was a Senator for Queensland from 2000 to 2018, representing the Liberal Party, and was a cabinet minister in the Abbott and Turnbull governments. He was later High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2018 to 2022.
Brandis studied law at the University of Queensland and Magdalen College, Oxford. Before entering politics he practised as a barrister. He was appointed to the Senate in 2000 to fill the casual vacancy caused by the resignation of Warwick Parer. He served as Minister for the Arts and Sport for the last year of the Howard government in 2007. When the Coalition returned to power in 2013, Brandis became Attorney-General and Minister for the Arts. He relinquished the latter portfolio in 2015, when Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister, but was instead made Leader of the Government in the Senate.
Brandis announced his retirement from politics in December 2017, with effect from February 2018. He replaced Alexander Downer as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in May 2018, departing the role in April 2022. In June 2022, Brandis was appointed a professor in national security at the Australian National University.
Following graduation, Brandis served as Associate to Justice Charles Sheahan of the Queensland Supreme Court. He was then elected a Commonwealth Scholar and obtained a Bachelor of Civil Law from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1983.
Brandis applied to be appointed Senior Counsel in the late 1990s, but was unsuccessful. Brandis applied again in 2006. He was not on the Queensland Bar Association's shortlist; however the Chief Justice of Queensland, Paul de Jersey, who had the power to make the ultimate determination, added Brandis' name to the list, and Brandis was appointed Senior Counsel in November 2006. This was controversial, since Brandis had not practised at the bar since 2000. In June 2013, the original title of Queen's Counsel was restored by the Queensland Government and Brandis was one of 70 (out of 74) Queensland SCs who chose to become QCs.
Brandis has co-edited two books on liberalism, and published academic articles on various legal topics,George Brandis, 'Rawls on Liberty' (1989) 49-50 Bulleton of the Australian Society of Legal Philosophy 169.George Brandis, 'Interlocutory injunctions to restrain speech' (1992) 12 Queensland Lawyer 169.George Brandis, 'The Debate We Didn't Have to Have: The Proposal for an Australian Bill of Rights' (2008) 15 James Cook University Law Review 24.George Brandis, 'The Lawyer's Duty to Public Life' (Summer, 2011) New South Wales Bar Association, Bar News 118. one of which was cited by the High Court of Australia in the landmark defamation case ABC v O'Neill..
While at the Bar, Brandis was a board member of UNICEF Australia for 10 years. He has also been an Associate of the Australian Institute for Ethics and the Professions, and lectured in jurisprudence at the University of Queensland from 1984 to 1991.
In his period as a senator, he has served as Chairman of the Economics Committee and as Chairman of the Senate's Children Overboard Inquiry.
Brandis has also made a number of public speeches. In 2003, he described the Australian Greens as Eco-fascism.
Brandis claimed over $1,000 in taxpayer expenses to attend the inaugural Sir Garfield Barwick address in Sydney on 28 June 2010. The event was billed as a Liberal party fund-raiser.
In 2016 Brandis was caught on a "hot mic" calling his state colleagues in the Queensland Liberal National Party "very very mediocre".
On 2 June 2008 Brandis, in his capacity as Shadow Attorney-General, referred the Same-Sex Relationships (Equal Treatment in Commonwealth Laws – Superannuation) Bill 2008 to a Senate committee for review. The aim of the bill was to remove legislative provisions that discriminated against gay and lesbian citizens, in this case relating to superannuation. Brandis stated that the Opposition believed discrimination of this type should be removed and supported the Labor government's bill against the more conservative elements of his own party. However, he insisted on a review of the proposed legislation prior to enactment. The bill was passed into law with bipartisan support on 9 December 2008.
Brandis consistently opposed proposals for a bill of rights.
In January 2010, Brandis commented on a controversial debate between Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard and federal Opposition Leader Tony Abbott on the topic of advice given to children regarding abstinence.
In 2011, Brandis submitted specific accusations to NSW police commissioner Andrew Scipione that sitting federal M.P. Craig Thomson committed larceny and fraud through misuse of a credit card in the Health Services Union expenses affair. This led to some questioning Brandis's suitability as attorney-general if the opportunity ever arose.
Brandis faced public scrutiny when it was revealed that in 2011 he had billed the taxpayer for attending the wedding ceremony of Sydney radio shock-jock Michael Smith, who had colluded with Brandis to publicise the Craig Thomson media saga.
As Arts Minister, Brandis received significant criticism from the arts industry for a $105 million cut to the Australia Council for the Arts funding in the 2015–16 Australian Federal Budget. The money was reallocated to a new program, The National Program for Excellence in the Arts (NPEA). The NPEA in turn has been criticised by many artists and arts organisations for lacking the "arms-length" funding principles that have applied to the relationship between the government and the Australia Council since its inception in the 1970s. These principles have traditionally had bipartisan support. Brandis had been criticised previously for giving Melbourne classical music record label Melba Recordings a $275,000 grant outside of the usual funding and peer-assessment processes. Brandis's changes to funding arrangements, including the quarantining of the amount received by Australia's 28 major performing arts companies, are widely seen to disadvantage the small-to-medium arts sector and independent artists. Following Malcolm Turnbull's successful spill of the leadership of the Liberal party in September 2015, Brandis was replaced as arts minister by Mitch Fifield.
Brandis did not support the Labor government's proposed media reforms in 2013, and was outspoken in support of greater press freedom, particularly for Andrew Bolt who was found to have breached racial vilification laws in commenting on Indigenous Australians of mixed-race descent. As Attorney-General in 2014, Brandis furthered his push to amend the RDA, in part to allow media commentators such as Andrew Bolt greater freedom of expression, and to legally ensure that "people do have a right to be bigots". Brandis labelled Bolt's comments on mixed descent Aboriginal people, found by the Federal Court to be racial vilification, as "quite reasonable", although the federal court found Bolt violated the RDA and the plaintiffs were awarded an apology and legal costs. Professor Marcia Langton was a vocal public critic of Brandis's proposed repeal of the part of the RDA on which the Bolt case was based.
In 2017, Brandis condemned Pauline Hanson for wearing a Burqa in the Senate Chamber, explaining her "stunt" ridiculed the Muslim community and mocked its religious garments, and he cautioned her against the offence she might cause to the religious sensibilities of Muslim Australians.
Additionally Brandis approved the ASIO raid and passport cancellation of a former Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) agent, who was a director of technical operations at ASIS and the whistle-blower on the allegations of commercial spying done by Australia on East Timor, which consequently prevented the unnamed former agent from testifying at the ICJ in the Netherlands.
Triggs defended her decision to commence the investigation in early 2014, saying that although the number of detainees had begun to fall while the Coalition were in Government, the length of time in detention had been rising.
Further controversy arose when Triggs told a Senate Estimates hearing that Brandis' departmental secretary had on 3 February 2015 asked her to resign, just prior to the public release of the commission's report. Triggs said that she was told that she would be offered "other work with the government" if she resigned. Initially the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, denied that any offer of any other role was made to Triggs. However, Bishop conceded that an international role had been discussed with Triggs in early February, during a meeting in her office with the secretary of the Attorney-General's Department, Chris Moraitis.
Some government sources had suggested that Triggs had wanted to be "looked after" if she quit the commission. However, Triggs said she "categorically denies any suggestion that the issue of a job offer and resignation came at her instigation". Triggs said at the Senate hearing that she considered the offer made to her a "disgraceful proposition".
These events prompted Mark Dreyfus, Labor's Shadow Attorney-General, to refer the matter to the Australian Federal Police. Dreyfus said that an offer by Brandis to an independent statutory officer of an inducement to resign, with the object of affecting the leadership of the commission to avoid political damage, may constitute corrupt or unlawful conduct. The Australian Senate also took up the matter, passing a motion to censure Brandis on 2 March.
On 25 November 2016, The West Australian newspaper reported that the reason for Brandis issuing the direction was that Gleeson had provided advice on behalf of the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in a High Court case over the collapse of The Bell Group in 1991. The Western Australian government had passed legislation ( Bell Group Company’s Finalisation of Matters and Distribution of Proceeds Act 2015), elevating the Insurance Commission of WA in the queue of Bell Group creditors ahead of the ATO. In April 2015, the WA state government received an assurance from then federal Treasurer Joe Hockey that the Commonwealth would not intervene, however the ATO sought advice from Gleeson as its counsel that federal taxation law overrode the state legislation. The paper alleged that Brandis had told Gleeson not to run the argument, however it was still contained in the ATO's submission to the High Court, which subsequently unanimously rejected the WA government's case and struck down the Bell Act.
Brandis formally resigned from the Senate on 8 February 2018. In his farewell speech to the Senate he was critical of anti-terrorism laws being used by his own party as a "political weapon" and warned against the "powerful elements of right-wing politics" who had abandoned concern for the rights of the individual in favour of a "belligerent, intolerant populism".
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