Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to thank the member for Fremantle for that measured, statesman-like contribution on the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2023. The federal Administrative Review Tribunal has a nice ring to it; for those who've already put up with the discredited AAT for years now, it's a work of art, no doubt. It is a critical generational reform to replace the sadly discredited and, not to put too fine a point on it, stacked AAT. The Attorney-General is a man of detail, and with this bill he has surgically taken the scissors to the old AAT and is reconstructing it in this new form.

I record, right at the outset, why merits review of administrative decisions is so important for Australians who rely every year, day after day, on an independent review of government decisions. For many Australians, there are major life-altering impacts as a result of the decisions of an administrative review tribunal: whether they will receive an aged pension; whether Services Australia has fairly and correctly made a decision about their disability support pension; veterans being compensated for a service injury which was incurred in doing their duty for their country; businesses being stuffed around by government departments having a right of redress that's fair, independent and impartial; visa and citizenship decisions; and decisions regarding the NDIS and all manner of government agencies.

Australians expect, rightly so, professional decisions and an impartial tribunal when they turn up, but unfortunately the truth is the government inherited a horrible mess: a backlog of tens of thousands of cases, languishing. Australians were waiting for their review to happen, month after month, year after year, desperately writing into that black hole that had developed under those opposite in their wasted decade of decay, division and dysfunction.

It was an inefficient tribunal with outdated IT systems and long Liberal lunches—so the gossip goes, on some of the members who just don't seem to do any work once they're appointed. When they appoint their mates, they turn up, collect their large salaries and don't actually write judgements and do their work. The thing is close to broke, frankly, and through the government's reforms this bill will put it on a financially sustainable footing. It was stacked to the rafters with Liberal hacks. There was a perception that there was no merits based appointment. The people who were appointed to these jobs were not put there on merit; they were put there because of their mateship with the Liberal Party. It was so stacked even the member for Mitchell would have blushed, maybe. It was more stacked than a Deakin Liberal branch. Even the Western Australian clan have nothing on this!

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