Attorney-General George Brandis fought a three-year legal battle to keep his ministerial diary secret, costing taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. Now, under threat of contempt of court proceedings, he has finally relented and released it, but it doesn't reveal much.

Senator Brandis released 34 pages of print outs of appointments from email and calendar software Microsoft Outlook to his Labor counterpart Mark Dreyfus late on Friday, just before a deadline imposed by the shadow attorney-general's lawyers.

The release came nearly three years after Mr Dreyfus first requested the documents under freedom of information laws, and six months after the full bench of the Federal Court ruled Senator Brandis had no valid grounds to withhold them from the public.

The documents, released by Senator Brandis' chief of staff James Lambie, cover the period from September 2013 to May 2014. They have been redacted to exclude "personal matters, political party matters, security matters and other irrelevant or exempted matters".