Mr. Conor Linehan:

I want to be clear concerning the Attorney General's advice. Given that I am not a constitutional lawyer, I really do not want to get into that territory. I am not avoiding that issue but there are aspects on which I can hopefully be helpful to the committee and others that I cannot deal with. The only context in which I mentioned it is that, in respect of some of the constitutional points I put in the written submission, I said I may be speculative here. I have tried to anticipate what problems the Attorney General's office may have identified and I have responded to them as best I can.

As regards the propriety of publishing that opinion, however, there are good reasons that there must be confidentiality. There may or may not have been precedents in the past for departing from that. The advice from the Attorney General's office to the Government is one of the first exceptions in the FOI legislation. Ultimately, if confidentiality is being cited then it is a political issue as to whether the committee can get the gist to help it in its deliberations. That is as much as I am prepared to say on that.

As regards the justiciability question, I gather that the inclusion of targets in the climate change response Bill 2010 was a controversial issue, even between the government parties at that stage. A reference was put in to say that nothing in the Bill, or the Act, would be justiciable.