Attorney-General George Brandis has pre-empted his opponents in the Senate by rescinding his controversial direction that all requests to the Solicitor-General for advice must go through him. After a scathing report from the non-government majority on a Senate inquiry into the events surrounding Brandis issuing the direction, the Senate numbers were there for it to...

On 15 September 2016 the Senate referred the following matter to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee (the committee) for inquiry and report by 8 November 2016: the nature and scope of the consultations prior to the making of the Legal Services Amendment (Solicitor-General Opinions) Direction 2016, with particular reference to: (a) the...

Overview ASPI was registered as a wholly government-owned company on 22 August 2001, but it was several years earlier when Ian McLachlan, the first Defence Minister of the Howard government, saw the need to establish an institute to provide an alternate source of advice on defence and strategic policy. The articles in this Strategic Insights...

Solicitor-General Justin Gleeson has quit, declaring his relationship with Attorney-General, George Brandis, is “irretrievably broken” and taking a major swipe at his government critics. Gleeson’s resignation follows their bitter row over Brandis’s order that all requests for the Solicitor-General’s advice must come through his office. In a toughly-worded letter to Brandis, Gleeson says his decision...

Audit approach The objectives of the audit were to: assess the effectiveness of the ongoing administration of the Australian Government’s campaign advertising framework; and assess the effectiveness of the selected entities’ administration in developing advertising campaigns and implementing key processes against the requirements of the campaign advertising framework applying at the time, and relevant legal...