1. George Henry Brandis was born on 22 June 1957 and is an Australian former politician.
51 Facts About George Brandis
1. 2.
George Brandis was a Senator for Queensland from 2000 to 2018, representing the Liberal Party, and was a cabinet minister in the Abbott and Turnbull governments.
3.
George Brandis was later High Commissioner to the United Kingdom from 2018 to 2022.
4.
George Brandis was appointed to the Senate in 2000 to fill the casual vacancy caused by the resignation of Warwick Parer.
5.
George Brandis served as Minister for the Arts and Sport for the last year of the Howard government in 2007.
6.
George Brandis relinquished the latter portfolio in 2015, when Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister, but was instead made Leader of the Government in the Senate.
7.
George Brandis announced his retirement from politics in December 2017, with effect from February 2018.
8.
George Brandis replaced Alexander Downer as High Commissioner to the United Kingdom in May 2018, departing the role in April 2022.
9.
In June 2022, George Brandis was appointed a professor in national security at the Australian National University.
10.
George Brandis was born in Sydney and was brought up in the inner-west suburb of Petersham.
11.
George Brandis attended Christian Brothers' High School, Lewisham before moving to Brisbane and attending Villanova College and the University of Queensland, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with First-Class Honours in 1978 and a Bachelor of Laws with First-Class Honours in 1980.
12.
George Brandis was then elected a Commonwealth Scholar and obtained a Bachelor of Civil Law from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1983.
13.
George Brandis developed a commercial practice with a particular emphasis on trade practices law.
14.
George Brandis appeared as junior counsel in the High Court of Australia in the equity case Warman v Dwyer.
15.
George Brandis was the junior barrister for the plaintiff in the long running Multigroup Distribution Services v TNT Australia litigation in the Federal Court of Australia.
16.
George Brandis applied to be appointed Senior Counsel in the late 1990s, but was unsuccessful.
17.
George Brandis 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.
18.
In June 2013, the original title of Queen's Counsel was restored by the Queensland Government and George Brandis was one of 70 Queensland SCs who chose to become QCs.
19.
George Brandis has co-edited two books on liberalism, and published academic articles on various legal topics, one of which was cited by the High Court of Australia in the landmark defamation case ABC v O'Neill.
20.
George Brandis has 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.
21.
George Brandis "cut his political teeth fighting a rearguard action against the incoming tide of neoliberal economics and a muscular social conservatism that increasingly came to characterise the party in the late 1980s and early 1990s".
22.
George Brandis was a co-editor of two anthologies produced by members of the faction, titled Liberals Face the Future and Australian Liberalism: The Continuing Vision.
23.
George Brandis was first chosen by the Parliament of Queensland to fill a casual vacancy following the resignation of Senator the Honourable Warwick Parer.
24.
George Brandis was elected to a further six-year term at the 2004 election.
25.
George Brandis claimed over $1,000 in taxpayer expenses to attend the inaugural Sir Garfield Barwick address in Sydney on 28 June 2010.
26.
In 2016 George Brandis was caught on a "hot mic" calling his state colleagues in the Queensland Liberal National Party "very very mediocre".
27.
On 23 January 2007, George Brandis was appointed Minister for the Arts and Sport, replacing Senator Rod Kemp.
28.
George Brandis lost his ministerial position on the defeat of the Howard government in the 2007 election.
29.
George 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.
30.
In January 2010, George 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.
31.
George 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 George Brandis to publicise the Craig Thomson media saga.
32.
George 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.
33.
George 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.
34.
George 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.
35.
Professor Marcia Langton was a vocal public critic of George Brandis's proposed repeal of the part of the RDA on which the Bolt case was based.
36.
In 2017, George 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.
37.
George Brandis supported and approved a December 2013 ASIO raid on Bernard Collaery's Canberra office, where all documents and computers were seized by the government, and which George Brandis claimed was for national security interests.
38.
George Brandis claimed the ICJ ruling was a good outcome for the government.
39.
In February 2015, George Brandis made headlines when he questioned the independence and impartiality of the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, following the public release of a report by the Commission into children in detention which was critical of the Government.
40.
George Brandis said he had lost confidence in Triggs and the Commission because in October 2014 she had given "inconsistent and evasive" evidence to Senate estimates when explaining the timing of her decision to hold the investigation into children in detention which resulted in the report.
41.
George Brandis said that the "political impartiality" of the commission had been "fatally compromised" because the commission had only investigated the issue after the Liberal-National Coalition were elected to power, even though there had been a large number of people in detention under the previous Labor government.
42.
In October 2016, allegations were made by Australia's Solicitor-General, Justin Gleeson SC, suggesting that George Brandis attempted to block the Solicitor-General from providing legal advice to members of the Australian Government without first seeking and receiving the permission of the Attorney-General.
43.
On 25 November 2016, The West Australian newspaper reported that the reason for George Brandis issuing the direction was that Gleeson had provided advice on behalf of the Australian Taxation Office in a High Court case over the collapse of The Bell Group in 1991.
44.
The paper alleged that George 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.
45.
Later in December 2016, George Brandis appointed two former Members of Parliament and members of the Liberal Party, who had been voted out at the 2016 federal election, to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a 7-year term.
46.
George Brandis was reported as being concerned about the new formation of the Department of Home Affairs under Dutton.
47.
Shortly after Dutton criticised lawyers who represented refugees and asylum seekers as "un-Australian", George Brandis gave a speech which championed lawyers and their role in ensuring the supremacy of the law against the executive government, which was largely seen as an attack on Dutton's comments.
48.
George Brandis formally resigned from the Senate on 8 February 2018.
49.
George Brandis was appointed to fill the post of Australia's next High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.
50.
George Brandis is an Advisory Board member of the Council on Geostrategy.
51.
George Brandis is a regular columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.