Talk:Attorney-General of Australia

correct appellation
is it "Attorney-General of Australia" or "Attorney-General for Australia"? its website appears to use "Attorney-General for Australia". see styling at http://www.attorneygeneral.gov.au (and other pages within the portal).71.183.40.173 (talk) 14:14, 23 December 2010 (UTC)


 * The official portfolio title is simply "Attorney-General". In order to distinguish it from the state counterparts, they unofficially append some disambiguator.  In the past it's been "of Australia", which seems good enough to me.  Why it's now become "for Australia" is a mystery.
 * I'm not sure Wikipedia has to slavishly follow it, because we're more guided by our own naming protocols. We distinguish the Australian A-G from the Brazilian one by "of Australia" and "of Brazil".  Who knows what the Brazilian A-G actually calls himself on his website, if he has one?  --   Jack of Oz   [your turn]  19:02, 23 December 2010 (UTC)
 * I have been bold and moved the page. We update all other ministerial articles as governments change their titles, so it makes sense to do so for this as well. While the legal creation might be "Attorney-General", the government has now consistently used "for Australia" for many years.
 * To offer an international perspective, the traditional UK usage was "for" a certain territory: e.g. Attorney-General for England and Wales, which has been followed in most other common law jurisdictions: e.g. Attorney-General for Ireland, while the US usage has been "of" a certain territory (and with no hyphen): e.g. "Attorney General of the United States" or "Attorney General of New York". While the Australian states seem mostly to retain the US usage, the Commonwealth has for whatever reason decided to move back to the UK pattern. Who knows how they decide these things, but given the way we track the equally ridiculous changes to titles of other ministers, it seems to me to make sense to follow the official usage. --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 13:31, 19 September 2013 (UTC)

links to state Attorneys-General
There should probably be a more direct and obvious link from this page to the state AG pages, eg Attorney-General of Western Australia (and between the state AGs?). I could add them to a See also section, but I suspect that a navbox is a better approach. Does someone more familiar than I with politics/legal categories and navboxes want to address this? Mitch Ames (talk) 01:58, 24 July 2011 (UTC)


 * In the absence of any feedback, I've added a list under See also. The list includes some redlinks, which contravenes WP:SEEALSO, but I feel that a complete list here is better than a partial list. Perhaps someone will take the hint and create the articles - or at least stubs! Here's a list of them all. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:17, 12 December 2011 (UTC)

Gap in List of As-G?
There appears to me to be a gap in the list, from 24 Mar 1993 to 1 Apr 1993 - I can't find a reference that mentions this 8 day period. Can anyone help / clarify / define / whatever? Thanks in advance. Cheers, Pdfpdf (talk) 12:43, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Solved/resolved by User:Rangasyd. Pdfpdf (talk) 13:32, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Attorneys-General by time served
What is the purpose of the list of how many days each person has served? Isn't it essentially covered by the last column of the main table? Green Giant (talk) 20:46, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Requested move 6 September 2020

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved as proposed, without opposition after more-than-adequate time for discussion. BD2412 T 19:30, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Attorney-General for Australia → Attorney-General of Australia – WP:COMMONNAME. The official gazetted title as of May 2019 is just "Attorney-General". There is inconsistent official use. For example, the attorney-general's website uses "for Australia" in its header but states on the homepage that "The Hon Christian Porter was appointed Attorney-General of Australia on 20 Dec 2017". A comparison of Google hits suggests that government websites favour "of Australia" by a factor of six to one: Results specifically for the parliamentary website follow the same trend if not more so: This is also true with no restrictions on domain (acknowledge this is a less reliable indicator): It seems Wikipedia users already prefer "of Australia" to "for Australia", as there are 220 links to "Attorney-General for Australia" (excluding redirects) versus 330 links to "Attorney-General of Australia". Ivar the Boneful (talk) 12:39, 6 September 2020 (UTC)
 * "attorney-general of australia" site:gov.au: 90,000 hits
 * "attorney-general for australia" site:gov.au: 13,900 hits
 * "attorney-general of australia" site:gov.au: 15,800 hits
 * "attorney-general for australia" site:gov.au: 1,940 hits
 * "attorney-general of australia": 536,000 hits
 * "attorney-general for australia": 49,800 hits
 * Support wholeheartedly: Unclear why it was never named this in the first place, especially given multiple other similarly titled articles use "Attorney-General of ...". Sean Stephens (talk) 10:41, 14 September 2020 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Official title
"Attorney General of Australia" might be a common informal name, but the official title is "Attorney-General for Australia", as is abundantly clear from the front page of the official website. This is the traditional, and constitutionally correct, form under a Westminster system. We should use the official title in the lead. The informal variant is adequately explained in the footnote. Grammatically, it's always "attorney-general [of person or polity] for [place]". So it's "Attorney-General of the Duchy of Lancaster", "of the United States", etc, but it's "Attorney-General [of the monarch] for England and Wales", "Advocate-General [of the monarch] for Scotland", etc. The official usage in Australia is consistent with that. Perhaps "Attorney-General of the Commonwealth of Australia" would be correct, but the official title is not framed that way - it's framed as attorney-general (of the monarch) for Australia s a place. --49.255.223.3 (talk) 23:44, 2 August 2021 (UTC)
 * See the RM above this discussion and the note in the lead. The official title is just "Attorney-General". 5225C (talk &bull; contributions) 00:57, 3 August 2021 (UTC)
 * That's a non-sequitur. The question is do you put "Attorney-General for Australia" or "Attorney-General of Australia" at the start. "Attorney-General" alone is clearly inappropriate. As the article itself notes, "Attorney General of Australia" is old - and possibly colloquial. The office itself uses "Attorney-General for Australia". --49.255.223.3 (talk) 07:39, 14 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Again, see the RM above. I assure you it is quite sound in its reasoning, since the official title is simply "Attorney-General" (so neither "of Australia" nor "for Australia" is an "official title", as you're trying to make out). The aricle was moved per WP:COMMONNAME. The name used by the office doesn't really factor into this. 5225C (talk &bull; contributions) 09:16, 14 April 2022 (UTC)

KC for former Attorneys-General
I can see that the titles for former Attorneys-General who have taken silk have been updated to reflect the change from QC to KC. It appears most of the ones updated are those who are living though some died with the title QC and have been updated to KC.

Surely the list should reflect their titles as at their last point before they left office? This would undoubtedly be a more accurate reflection of who held the role at the time. Jekrox (talk) 07:22, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, you're right, it should be how it was when they left office. 5225C (talk &bull; contributions) 07:46, 12 September 2022 (UTC)