When I ring Brisbane's Jellyfish restaurant to book this lunch, I let them know a photographer will be there to take some pictures of my guest. "Are you proposing?" the waitress asks. It's three days since same-sex marriage became legal - I gather a few people have popped the question.
It's an achievement Attorney-General George Brandis is keen to celebrate when we meet on a mild Monday a stone's throw from his Eagle Street office, at a seafood joint with expansive views over the Brisbane River and Story Bridge.
For the first time in a while, it has been a pretty good week for the government - and for Brandis himself.
In addition to finally securing marriage equality, Brandis introduced an extensive overhaul of Australia's laws on foreign espionage, interference and transparency. And in recent months, he has enjoyed something of a renaissance in the public's consciousness - especially among those of liberal persuasion - courtesy of a number of passionate speeches and interventions.
The occasion calls for a toast, though Brandis has to be strong-armed into sharing a bottle of Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc. The long lunch is a lost art form in both law and journalism, we agree - but it's December, and old habits die hard.
Brandis spent his early childhood in Sydney before moving to Brisbane and attending Villanova College. He studied law at the University of Queensland, but was "most interested in the humanities, primarily the history of ideas". He gave student politics a wide berth but was politically active outside campus, and wrote his honours thesis on "the role of ideology in the Liberal Party". He was one of the first people to assess the subject seriously, he says.
The young Brandis rejected the common view that "the Labor Party was intellectually interesting and the Liberal Party was philistine and intellectually barren". Rather, it embraced the English liberal tradition, best extolled by Robert Menzies in his then-unloved speeches about the Forgotten People. I put it to Brandis that perhaps the Liberal Party has strayed from those roots.
"Not lately!" he exclaims. "If anything, events in recent weeks show the opposite is true."
As entrees arrive - Tasmanian oysters for him, crab ceviche for me - Brandis is on a roll about the intersection between philosophers Immanuel Kant, Isaiah Berlin and Michael Oakeshott. It reminds me of an observation by one of his colleagues that Brandis is one of the few Liberals in Parliament who could deliver a lecture on the philosophy of the Liberal Party. The government would lose a chunk of its "intellectual heft" if it lost Brandis, the colleague lamented.
Some MPs say it's unfortunate Brandis is finding his voice toward the end of his career rather than the beginning. They point to his powerful, impromptu dressing-down of Pauline Hanson after she entered the Senate wearing a burqa, his passionate speeches on marriage equality and his apparent swipe at Peter Dutton in defence of the legal profession.
But Brandis rejects the idea he is swinging freely into the sunset, or that he has reinvented himself as a quasi-leftie. "I haven't deliberately reinvented anything," he says. "I am what I am. I hate the idea of people being picked on. Gay kids, Muslim migrants who might be bullied - I think that's horrible. And I do think - and this is not an ideological or philosophical view, it's a view based on decency - politicians should always stand up for the person who is most vulnerable."
He says he has never cultivated a particular image. He has knocked back several invitations to appear on Annabel Crabb's Kitchen Cabinet, and doesn't mix the private with the public.
"I have not tried to be a celebrity the way that some politicians try to be a celebrity," he says. "I don't merchandise my children in the way some do. I wanted to achieve a few things, marriage equality being one of them - I don't need to tell everybody what my favourite colour is or what the name of my dog is to achieve what I want to achieve."
By this stage we're tucking into mains of Atlantic salmon and "excellent" Queensland barramundi. It seems like the right time to ask about Brandis' potential departure from politics, a rumour that has percolated for more than a year, seemingly fuelled by enemies within. But with marriage equality done, some of his responsibilities being lost to Dutton's new Home Affairs department and the government heading for likely defeat at the election, according to the polls, this is surely an opportune moment to cut the cord. But Brandis won't be drawn.
"The idea that you write off the government is wrong, it's unhistorical," he says. "There is a belief that we can win and that we will win, and that belief is partly a function of the Prime Minister's self-belief, which is a great asset to the government." He says Turnbull has "grown in stature" and is "looking more and more like John Howard every day".
That comparison may come as a surprise to those who remember Brandis from his days as a thorn-in-the-side backbencher under Howard, whom Brandis memorably dubbed "the rodent". But Brandis' affection for Turnbull is genuine - not just pollie-to-pollie, but lawyer-to-lawyer. And the two have recently spent much time buried in legalese, alongside solicitor-general Stephen Donaghue, navigating a path through the dual citizenship fiasco.
"He's very engaged in legal issues in a way that Tony Abbott, who never practised as a lawyer, wasn't," says Brandis. And then there is their ideological compatibility. "I am a reasonably cautious, reasonably conservative classical liberal with a very deep belief in the rule of law. And life is friendlier in the Turnbull government for people of that mind than it was in the Abbott government."
Still, both governments have at times tested the Attorney-General on his job of administering the rule of law. He insisted the A-G retain power over issuing ASIO warrants under the Home Affairs administration. Notably, he argued in cabinet against extra-judicial measures preventing registered child sex offenders travelling overseas - laws which came into effect this week. "I haven't had to make the point very often," says Brandis. "But when it has had to be made, I've made it."
Sometimes his virulent defence of the law has come at a political cost - Brandis was widely chastised, amid the debate about changing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, for saying that "people do have the right to be bigots". He is unrelenting on that point.
"That was an offhand remark about the state of the law," he says. "If you're going to be an honest politician, you have to be willing to say things that are unattractive to people but are nevertheless true."
Brandis has also been at the centre of some spectacular personality clashes, notably with former solicitor-general Justin Gleeson and former Human Rights Commission boss Gillian Triggs. Gleeson was "impossible to work with", he says, while Triggs was a decent person who "made some catastrophic errors of judgment" and lost the government's trust and respect.
Those battles - along with other gaffes such as his notorious metadata interview on Sky News, or his boom mic moment calling the Queensland LNP "very, very mediocre" - are now firmly in the past.
But whether the (non) reinvention of George Brandis ends here, or continues apace in 2018, remains to be seen.
