Gavin Pearce (Braddon, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health, Aged Care and Indigenous Health Services) Share this | Hansard source

Like me! The government wants these three bills to be the only topic of substantive debate in this chamber over the next 72 hours. You may ask yourself why. I'll tell you why: they don't want this debate on this issue because, at the end of the day, we haven't even had the benefit of any substantive committee inquiry. There are three bills here all being debated together. The first bill, the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2023, establishes a new federal system of administrative review. The second bill, the Administrative Review Tribunal (Consequential and Transitional Provisions No. 1) Bill 2023, deals with the changes to 138 different Commonwealth acts—138. And the third bill, the Administrative Review Tribunal (Consequential and Transitional Provisions No. 2) Bill 2024, affects 110 different acts. The first two bills have not been the subject of any scrutiny worth the name. And the third has never been examined by a committee at all; the Law Council of Australia has never made submissions about it.

We have no idea whether these bills are fit for purpose. But we, on this side, are being asked to vote on them. And why? The answer is that they want this House, this week, to approve the transition of one of the largest case loads—if not the largest case load—of any Commonwealth review body we've ever seen, without any detailed examination of whether the transitional arrangements will work. And why? They want this House, this week, to approve this legislation that will require the expenditure of an unknown amount of money—potentially, hundreds of millions of dollars—in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, without knowing what the actual impact will be. And again we ask the question: why?

To an outsider observing it, it's baffling. So it's worth spending a few minutes explaining why the coalition is not prepared to simply wave this one through and endorse this legislation. At the outset, it's worth saying a few things about the coalition's position as to reform of the AAT. The coalition is not opposed, in principle, to reforms of the Australian system of administrative review, and we do recognise that there are areas where there is legitimate need for reform and improvements could be made. After all, the administrative tribunal is a body that provides a review of government decisions made under about 400 different pieces of Commonwealth legislation. By necessity, its remit is complex and wideranging. It reaches into virtually all portfolios and it deals with matters ranging from tariff concessions to FOI, veterans affairs and national security. That's why this is important.

We recognise that it is almost inevitable that, in a body with such a wideranging suite of responsibilities, over time reforms will be needed. We get that. But developments in the law, unforeseen factors affecting how administrative issues play out on the ground, new interactions between statutes and even simply the march of technology will all, over time, create and throw up new challenges and obstacles. They will require changes to the legislation. We should judge those changes on their merits, and they should be studied in detail.

The issue that we have today, as I have explained, is that we are simply not in a position where we're going to make a judgement call. As to what Labor wants to talk about: in case it wasn't clear, the fact is that this debate has been brought forward in a rush, to distract from things that the government doesn't want to talk about, because the government doesn't want to talk about the fact that, on their watch, families have been slugged with a nine per cent increase in the cost of groceries. Labor doesn't want to talk about the fact that we are experiencing two consecutive quarters of the slowest gross domestic product growth in almost 18 years, outside the pandemic. They don't want to talk about their paralysis in the face of a wave of youth crime. They don't want to talk about their inexcusable bungling and mismanagement of immigration detention, the release of violent criminals onto our streets and into our towns, and their extraordinary concession in the last week that they no longer have control of our migration system. They don't want to talk about the fact that energy prices have gone up more than $1,000 in some regions, despite their promise to reduce them by—what was that number again? That's right: $275.

Instead, we have a debate on legislation that has not been considered, and without the benefit of hearing or testing the evidence. You can't just simply sign off on this without knowing what it does and without having the confidence that it is fit for purpose, as I said earlier, especially when it affects so many laws across the statute book.

It would be an abrogation of our duty as legislators if we were simply to wave this through. We call on the government to allow proper committee inquiries before these bills go to a vote. If these bills do go to a vote this week, as the government apparently intends, let me simply say that the coalition will not rubber stamp the majority of these major changes to our legal system without scrutiny, and we will reserve our position in the Senate.

It's also worth saying a few words about the AAT and its members. Many of those will line up today and read out the approved talking points, without doubt parroting the government's dubious claim that as many as 85 people serving on the tribunal were associated with the coalition. It is a dubious claim made by the Labor-aligned Australia Institute which has been repeated on the apparent basis that—

Government members interjecting—

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