Politics With Michelle Grattan

A contentious move by Attorney-General George Brandis to restrict access to legal advice from the solicitor-general is continuing to raise controversy and questions about its legal validity. Shadow Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus tells Michelle Grattan that he sees this as “the most extraordinary power grab by the Attorney-General in the history of the office”. “We already know that he’s held up requests. Why? I can’t say, but the deputy secretary of the department giving evidence to the Senate committee last week said that one of the requests had taken 10 days. "Now very often it’s urgent that you get legal advice. It’s never before been the position that secretaries of commonwealth departments, other ministers, the prime minister, the governor-general have been told that the written consent of the attorney-general is necessary before they get the advice of the solicitor-general,” he says. The solicitor-general has to be the primary source of advice on the most important matters of the government, Dreyfus says