Dan Tehan (Wannon, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

We tried to give the member for McEwen the opportunity, through calling for a quorum, to do a bit of homework and research on his talking points for his speech on the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2023, because there is a statistic that he failed to mention right throughout. It may surprise people, but almost half of the members who currently comprise the AAT were appointed under the current government. Almost half were appointed by the current government. It may surprise people as well that all of those 160 will remain after the AAT is abolished. So let's just put this in perspective: all those who you've appointed will stay there, and all those who've been previously appointed will need to reapply. Is that fair? Do you think that's proper process? Do you think that's how you should do reform? 'We will look after everyone who we have appointed, but, as for all those who have been appointed previously, we will make them go through a merits based qualification process.' Why don't you put the 160 that you appointed through the merits based process? Why doesn't the Attorney-General put those 160 through that? You talk about reform, but it's always reform which suits your interests and not the broader interests of the Australian people. That is what we see with this reform for the AAT here, as presented by the Attorney-General.

We're not saying that the AAT shouldn't be reformed. You should always look at how bodies like the AAT are performing and see whether there are new measures that you can put in place to make sure that they can continue to do the job that the Australian people want them to do. But reform the Labor way—as we have seen right across the board throughout the nearly two years that this government has been in place—is not reform in the interests of the Australian people. It's reform in Labor's base political interests, and that's all we see in everything that we touch on when it comes to this government.

I must say there are key things that we always fail to see. When it comes to transparency, do we get transparency from this government with how it goes about its decision-making? No, we do not—right across the board. There is never proper transparency, and I will give you one example which is relevant to the AAT because the AAT has a migration function. Do you think the minister for immigration will come into this place and tell the Australian people how many more hardened criminals potentially might have to be released from detention if the High Court makes a decision which goes against the government in the coming weeks? It might be that the High Court will find in favour or consistent with what the government is saying, but the point is: where is the transparency around that number, which we know is between 100 and 150? Of course, we don't see anything like that from the government, because it's transparency when it suits them.

When it comes to the AAT, it's very, very interesting to look at the performance measures in relation to transparency. In the financial year to 30 June 2022, the AAT exceeded its performance benchmark of 5,000 decisions published. It continued to exceed those benchmarks in the 2022-23 financial year. So there is transparency here, yet, when it comes to how the government is trying to undertake its reform process, there isn't proper transparency.

What about with regard to decision-making quality? We know that with the Attorney-General and the way that he has approached this issue the decision-making quality has been lacking from go to whoa. It's a great shame, because this could have been done in a thorough manner. It could have been done in consultation with the parliament. It's the type of process, when it comes to a body like the AAT, where you could get reasonable bipartisanship, but that's not what the government has sought to do, because, sadly, the Attorney-General's decision-making quality is seriously lacking.

Where is it at with regard to the AAT? In relation to decision-making quality, in 2021-22, the proportion of appeals allowed by the courts was below the benchmark of five per cent. The AAT continued to meet that threshold in the 2022-23 financial year. Once again, when it comes to decision-making quality, we see the Attorney-General and the government failing, but we see that the AAT is actually meeting the benchmarks that have been set for it by both sides of politics.

In terms of the clearance ratio, I'm trying to think of an analogy for the government with regard to clearance ratios, but it's hard to come at one. Maybe I will be able to think of something as I go through what the clearance ratio performance in 2021-22 of the AAT. It fell just short of its target, due primarily to the sudden jump in post-COVID lodgements. Having been at 119 per cent clearance ratio the year before, in 2021-22 it dropped to 95 per cent in the face of a sudden surge in lodgements. The number of lodgements dropped off significantly in 2022-23 and the AAT is back to the position of finalising more cases than lodged.

Then we go to the final point, which is in regard to sheer output. We know that the government is lacking when it comes to sheer output. We have got most ministers completely and utterly underperforming. But how is the AAT going when it goes to sheer output? In the number of AAT applications and referrals finalised in 2021-22, the AAT reached 90 per cent of its target. It's not 100 per cent, but they reached 90 per cent of its target. There were factors that were outside the AAT's control. For instance, there were continued disruptions associated with COVID-19. Obviously we all know that that meant it was harder for the AAT to be able to do its job.

I say all this in stating once again that the AAT is not a perfect body and the AAT does need to improve its performance, especially when it comes to the timeliness of decision-making. This is something that we do want to see improve. There are very good reasons as to why we want to see this improve. One of the reasons why timeliness has been a factor is to do with the complex legacy migration cases from many thousands of unlawful arrivals under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd Labor years. That has made the case load very complex for the AAT and components of the AAT, in particular the Migration Review Tribunal. It has meant some of the timeliness is seriously in need of fixing.

I will give you an example of this when it comes to those people who are coming to Australia—we had nearly 23,000 such arrivals last year under the Labor government—people who are coming here by plane and then claiming asylum. It can take up to 10 years for those claims to be heard and finalised. Obviously, while something is taking that long, that acts as a way and a means for people smugglers to be able to say to people, 'If you get to Australia through legal means and then you seek asylum, you will be able to stay in Australia and enjoy the Australian way of life for up to 10 years.

We seriously need to deal with this issue, especially now, when we have some law and some legal and migration agents actually advertising, including on Facebook, for people to come here and seek asylum as a way of staying in Australia for over 10 years. So the timeliness issue is definitely something that we need to look at. It's not just the timeliness of the process leading to perverse incentives, as we are seeing from those who are coming legally by plane then seeking to claim asylum. It's the extra costs right throughout the system that this leads to as well—those extra welfare payments; the extra costs of appeal after appeal after appeal. Sometimes there are appeals through the Migration Review Tribunal, the AAT, the Federal Court, right through the system. That adds to the cost to the taxpayer right across the board. There are a number of things that the government should do to seek to fix this. Reform of the AAT is one such thing, but some clear policy work to also address this issue is desperately needed.

One of the things that I'm hoping is that the immigration minister will find time to look at this, because I'm not quite sure what he's been doing—well, I am quite sure what he has been doing over the last year and a half. He got very distracted by, first of all, trying to fundraise for Dan Andrews and then got very focused on promoting the Voice. Then he went overseas to the UK Labour conference, and then he was promoting and making sure that people were out voting for the Voice when he was in the UK. Meanwhile, he didn't turn up to three key legal briefings that his department offered. So there are many things that he has been doing that very clearly show that he hasn't had his priorities right. Hopefully that will change and one of the things he will be able to do is focus on this issue, where we do need to get these timeliness issues fixed when it comes to the Migration Review Tribunal and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

We want to work cooperatively and seriously with the government to make sure that there is proper reform of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, but it has to be done in a way where there can be meaningful discussions and meaningful consultation and where the opposition is properly and thoroughly engaged with. I'm not holding out great hope that that's what will happen. Unfortunately, the Attorney-General has a track record which isn't one of being bipartisan. It's one of being more partisan than not. As a matter fact, I think it would be fair to say that, when it comes to this place, the Attorney-General is one of those characters that just seems to love the partisanship rather than the bipartisanship. But I might be wrong, and the Attorney-General might surprise me. If he did, I think we would go a long way to making sure we were getting the type of reform to the AAT that is required. So I say to the Attorney-General: please reach out to the shadow Attorney-General and make sure that you engage properly so that we can make sure that we get all the proper reforms that we need and we can make sure we get good balance in this bill.

As I said at the start, what we've seen so far is that the government is hell-bent on looking after all those people that it appointed and then wants to bring change for all those people who they didn't appoint. Some of those people have incredibly impeccable credentials when it comes to sitting on the AAT. So let's make sure that we do this properly, let's drive through the type of reform that the AAT needs and let's in particular make sure that we address that issue of timeliness, because it's in all of our interest. It's in the government's interest and it's in the parliament's interest that that issue of timeliness is dealt with. As I've said—and I've given one clear example of this—if that timeliness issue isn't fixed when it comes to those people who are coming to Australia by legal means on student visas, on tourist visas or on any other types of visas and then claiming asylum, we are going to be left with another mess of this government's making.

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