Not to be too modest about it, but I have read a good many of the books he has recently purchased (and, I should think, read) and those of them that are not very interesting are at the very least character-forming, and suitable for a person of his vocation. Reading some of these books, even by his own colleagues, would have been more duty than personal pleasure.

These days, it is delightful to find a politician, and even an attorney-general, who reads at all. Not all do. Not all can, I suspect. Even more delightful to find politicians who read but do not write. I think it was Elle Macpherson who remarked that she had never read a book that she had not written (sort of - her book was, of course, ghost-written, and I doubt she, or anyone else, actually read it). But if it was not her, it was probably Paul Howes, who graced us with his autobiography a few minutes after achieving notoriety for being a faceless man. I did not actually buy this book as such - it was supplied free of charge by a publicist. But I read it, and allow that its quotient of two and three syllable words is a source of wonder and delight, especially in one so young and unformed. Even the grammar and punctuation is OK by modern standards.

I suspect some of the polysyllables came from a Marxist word generator. Howes was - at a time when most people of his age were still at school - a Trotskyite interfacing with the more lumpen part of the proletariat, and it is my (extensive) experience with people of this background that leads me to know that meaningless gabble has been memorised and can be activated at random by aural or visual cues.

Be that as it may, he saw the light at about age 16 and joined the NSW Labor Right, in the same manner as that of Michael Knight or Ian Macdonald, without any apparent shift in his personality, such as it is, or his convictions (ditto). Though he has had a life (at 32) of great achievement, it is one of minimal interest or evidence of ethos, conviction or reflection.

Mr Howes is not, however, the youngest Australian politician to pen his autobiography. Unless Wyatt Roy has written his - and it is surely overdue and bound to be on the Attorney-General's Christmas gift list - that honour belongs to Andrew Jones, who was unexpectedly elected as Liberal member for Adelaide in the 1966 landslide, aged 22. His soon-penned autobiography became required reading. Inter alia, it alleged that many senators and members read comics during session and half were drunk half the time. (He was too polite to say that the other half were drunk all the time.)

The autobiography was a curiosity - indeed, I wouldn't mind having one again for my political biography collection - but it did not transfix the marketplace. There was a time when the Angus & Robertson store in Pitt Street, Sydney was selling it for 99¢ with a pair of Kolotex pantihose thrown in. Few took up the offer, although more did when the deal was reversed to include the sale of pantihose for 99¢ with a copy of Andrew Jones MHR: By Himself (1967) thrown in.

I am sure that the propensity of a George Brandis to buy such an item - if only as a piece of Liberal Party solidarity or memorabilia - would have been increased only marginally by the fact that George has a habit of charging books of this ilk, as well as newspapers and magazines, to the taxpayer, as a legitimate expense of holding political office. As is, apparently, wining and dining reptiles of the press and radio, and attending the weddings of shock jocks. The anger and disdain this has attracted, even privately from some of his colleagues, is aggravated by the thought that he could be a bit of a hypocrite, given that he has been a terrier in pursuing Peter Slipper for alleged self-indulgence with parliamentary expenses, and Craig Thomson, in his case with union expenses.

When first taxed, as it were, about his book expense claims, he pointed out, reasonably, that the subject matter of most of the books was closely associated with his political and parliamentary activities and responsibilities. He said he expected that most would have been law reports.

On this he was slightly mistaken, at least as to quantum, but his expenditure on law reports was of the order $6000, not a slight sum, and showing that he is keeping up with legal developments in his profession. It also showed how refreshingly fuddy-duddy he is.

One can, these days, obtain on the internet judgments from courts and tribunals in Australia, the US, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and even American Samoa. Most are available, even on iPads and iPhones, on the day they are delivered. One can Google, fold, spindle, mutilate, boil, bake, roast, drain, dry, distil or tweet them, and any number of news services, old and new, report them, even soliciting comments from luminaries such as Brandis upon them. Law reports, as books, by contrast come out about six months late and are usually carefully chosen to exclude anything interesting or useful. But they do look splendid on a lawyer's wall, and lawyers who keep building up complete sets often get them nicely bound so that they can sell them, often unopened, to the person to whom, in due course, they sell their places in chambers.

I was once involved in preparing law reports, under the guidance of Professor Les Zions. It was the Bengali Law Reports, one of the few yet to be digitalised. Some others know them as annotated Phantom comics. A typical annotation - on, say, an image of the Ghost Who Walks knocking out a baddy - might be, ''For a commentary on this method of interrogation, see Tuckiar v the King, 52 CLR 335.''

Justice Eddie McTiernan, who sat on the Tuckiar case in 1934 and who was still sitting in 1976, had as one of his many perks and privileges as a judge the right to send his law reports away to be bound in elegant leather, at Commonwealth expense. It was somewhat resented by the Commonwealth that, in indulging himself of this privilege, he had a tendency to also send off prayer books and other tomes he thought would look splendid, or more personally valuable, in leather. Heaven forfend that Senator Brandis expects us to pay for his binding, other than with Bengali Law Reports.