Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme) Share this | Hansard source

Thanks, Mr Speaker. A key witness has emerged in the royal commission to help explain how an unlawful scheme can run for 4½ years without it being publicly identified as unlawful by ministers. This witness I refer to is Professor Terry Carney. He's an emeritus professor. He's taught thousands of law students, from Sydney university to Monash University. He served on the AAT and its predecessor bodies for four decades. He's identified 210 cases that were decided by the AAT over three years on questions of lawfulness. All were in favour of the applicant, not the Commonwealth. He decided five of them himself. So he's reviewed the whole list and found 210. He ruled on five of them himself. He's gone to the heart of the explanation for how, in an unlawful scheme run by ministers, they did not know about it. How was it 'see no evil, hear no evil'? How was it plausibly deniable? How did they say, 'We didn't know'? What he said is that when governments lose cases on the law—and this goes for all governments of all persuasions across our time—they either choose to act on the decision or choose to appeal it, but neither happened in 210 cases. They did nothing. One case, maybe, slipped under the radar—or two cases or three cases—but it really strains credulity that you can have 210 cases over three years—'Nothing to see here, Your Honour.'

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