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George Henry Brandis, SC (born 22 June 1957), Australian politician, has been a Liberal member of the Australian Senate since May 2000, representing Queensland. He was first appointed by the Queensland Parliament to fill a casual vacancy following the retirement of Senator the Hon. Warwick Parer. He was subsequently elected to a further 6 year term in 2004.

He was born in Sydney, New South Wales, but was raised in Brisbane, Queensland. He attended Villanova College and then the University of Queensland where he received a Bachelors degrees in Law and Arts (Politics), both with first class honours. Following his graduation he served as Associate to Justice Sheahan of the Queensland Supreme Court. He was then elected a Commonwealth Scholar and obtained a Bachelor in Civil Law from Magdalen College, Oxford University winning the Sir Rupert Cross Prize for Evidence. He was called to the Queensland Bar in 1985 and quickly developed a large commercial practice with a particular emphasis on trade practices law.

While in the Senate he has served as Chairman of the Economics Committee and featured prominently as the Chairman of the Senate's highly publicised Children Overboard Inquiry.

In the wake of the Children Overboard inquiry, Brandis gained widespread attention when it was reported that he called Prime Minister John Howard "a lying rodent"[1], a report he denied.

Prior to entering the Senate he was a board member of UNICEF Australia for 10 years, and he also lectured in jurisprudence at the University of Queensland. He resides in Brisbane. He has co-authored two books on liberalism. He has also made a number of public speeches, perhaps the most controversial of which was in 2003 when he described the Australian Greens as representing Ecofascism[2].

Brandis also attacked the Greens in the Australian Senate where he stated "I intend to continue to call to the attention of the Australian people the extremely alarming, frightening similarities between the methods employed by contemporary green politics and the methods and the values of the Nazis"[3].

Prime Minister John Howard later distanced himself from Brandis' claim that the Greens use Nazi-style fanaticism in Australian politics [4].

Brandis was appointed a Senior Counsel of the Supreme Court of Queensland in November 2006.

On 23 October 2006, Brandis made headlines when he wanted Good Shepherd Catholic College in Mount Isa to ban from its school library the book "100 Greatest Tyrants" by British author Andrew Langley, which places Sir Robert Menzies, the longest serving Australian Prime Minister, in such company as Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and Augusto Pinochet. The book claims that PM Menzies was a tyrant (an abuser of political power) and that Menzies' most tyrannical act was when he wanted to ban the Australian Communist Party. The school principal Mr Durie said "Obviously it's twaddle to suggest Menzies was a tyrant in the same class as Attila the Hun and that crowd", but refused to withdraw the book as it would be a resource for the generation of debate[5].

On 23 January 2007, Prime Minister John Howard announced that Brandis would be appointed the Minister for the Arts and Sports, replacing Senator the Honourable Rod Kemp. As Minister for the Arts and Sports, Brandis will be responsible for a number of Australian Government portoflio agencies. These include:

• National Archives of Australia
• Australia Council for the Arts
• Australian Film Commission
• Australian Film, Television and Radio School
• Australian National Maritime Museum
• Australian Sports Commission
• Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority (ASADA)
• National Gallery of Australia
• National Library of Australia
• National Museum of Australia
• Australia Business Arts Foundation
• Australian Sports Foundation
• Bundanon Trust
• Film Australia
• Film Finance Corporation Australia Limited
• Artbank
• National Portrait Gallery
• Old Parliament House