Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) and senior officials from the AGS

I ended my working visit to Canberra, Australia 🇦🇺 by meeting with Matthew Blunn, the Australian Government Solicitor (AGS) and senior officials from the AGS.

I was joined by YB William Leong, YB Datuk Awang bin Hashim and other senior officials from the Legal Affairs Division of the Prime Minister’s Department and the Attorney-General’s Chambers. 

AGS is the central legal services provider to the Australian government. It works in the interests of the government and primarily handles civil and commercial law matters involving the government. With nearly 600 lawyers and close to 200 support staff, the AGS maintains offices throughout Australia. Read more about the AGS here: https://www.ags.gov.au. 

I was fascinated to learn how the AGS operates. 

Although the AGS are the ‘government’s lawyers’, it is neither automatic nor compulsory that the AGS provide government agencies legal services or represent government agencies in legal proceedings. In short, they are not the government’s exclusive lawyers. It is open to government agencies to decide whether they wish to hire private lawyers or engage the services of the AGS. Should the government engage services of the AGS, they are then charged professional fees by AGS for their legal services.

In this respect, the AGS, though a government agency itself, fashions and operates itself as a law firm. I found this to be interesting as it promotes healthy competition and generates revenue for the AGS. Further, in a system such as this, government agencies are able to appoint legal experts who specialise in specific areas of the law to represent them in matters where such specialist services are required. They are not confined to only accepting legal services from the AGS.  I found this to be a transparent process in providing legal services to the government. 

To my mind, this is a model that should be studied to be determine its viability in the Malaysia context. Apart from promoting healthy competition in the Malaysian legal sector, it would present our government agencies a variety of options in selecting legal services of their choice according to the unique needs of their legal issues. 

In relation to the separation of the Offices of the Attorney-General and the Public Prosecutor, we discussed the role of the AGS within the Australian government’s legal structure and if the AGS plays any role in the conduct of prosecutions. 

I learnt that the AGS takes primary and exclusive lead in presenting the position and arguments of the government when constitutional questions and arguments arise during the course of a prosecution. I found the role of the AGS to be most interesting and a rather unique set up.

The question of who will assume this role when similar situations occur in upon separating the Offices of the Attorney-General and Public Prosecutor in Malaysia is one that must be thought about and answered in the course of our empirical study on this matter.