Sally Sitou (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the previous member's comments on this bill, the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2023, and her commitment to protecting our key institutions. It's a commitment that I share and that many on this side of the House share. As members of parliament we have all had constituents come into our electorate office with a government decision that just feels wrong and fundamentally unfair. Sometimes they are decisions made using the letter of the law as opposed to the spirit of the law, they are decisions that haven't taken into account extenuating circumstances or they are simply decisions that feel fundamentally unfair. Maybe a constituent has a Medicare debt that seems off, maybe there's an aged-care decision that doesn't truly take into account the needs of the individual or maybe a visa is not issued to a family member overseas, even when all evidence suggests that they meet the criteria.

If the issue can't be fixed by an electorate office, then they sometimes go to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. We have had one such case where a constituent had to go to a tribunal. She and her family were caught up in a terrible situation when they decided to knock down and rebuild their home so that they could live in that home with their daughter and her children. They made all the necessary checks with Centrelink to ensure that it wouldn't have an impact on the age pension that she and her husband were receiving. They were given assurances that they could live out of their primary residence for 12 months without it having an impact on their age pension.

But, because of a range of circumstances that were completely out of their control, including COVID, a range of supply chain issues and issues that they had with the construction company that they were working with, they had to live out of their primary residence for longer than 12 months. Centrelink then determined that it was no longer their primary residence, so they were no longer eligible for the age pension.

They had to fight the bureaucracy, and they fought it for months and months to get their age pension reinstated. They worked closely with my office, and it was only after they took the case up to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal that they got their age pension reinstated. It came at such a critical time in that family's experiences, because her husband had had a stroke in the intervening months and they were left without any government support. I'm so glad that that decision was overturned, that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal saw the extenuating circumstances that that family had to deal with and that they were able to get their age pension reinstated. It made such a difference to that family.

That's the role of the tribunal. The tribunal can have a profound impact on an individual's life. It is their last port of call. After they have tried all other avenues, this is their one Hail Mary shot at getting a bad decision overturned. That's why these decisions need to be made on the facts of the case and the impact that they're going to have on the individual, not with a view to the political ramifications. So it's incredibly disappointing to go over the way the previous government tarnished what ought to have been an independent institution.

A report by the Grattan Institute found that 20 per cent of the AAT's 320 tribunal members had a direct political connection to the government that appointed them. As many as 85 former Liberal MPs, former Liberal candidates, Liberal staffers and close associates of the Liberal Party were stacked into the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Many of these political appointments were made in the lead-up to the 2019 and 2022 federal elections. They were rewards for mates, returns of favours or a resting place for talent until they could go again at the next election.

These are lucrative roles. The Grattan Institute described the AAT as offering 'the full trifecta of powerful, prestigious and well-paid positions', with AAT members' salaries ranging from nearly $200,000 to nearly $500,000 a year. That the previous government thought they could and should stack this body is an indictment on their judgement. That they did this without a merit based selection process is shameful. It puts paid to the idea that those opposite have a profound regard for the institutions of this country when they again and again disregard many of the conventions and norms that we rely on to hold public trust in these institutions—because so-called conservatives come to this place and fundamentally undermine what ought to be independent and impartial decision-making bodies.

It's important to spell out why the actions of the former government were so destructive. The Grattan Institute succinctly sums it up with this line:

When mateship prevails over merit, all Australians suffer.

It's about the corrosive impact of this on the institutions of this country. It's about the practical impact of this on the day-to-day lives of our constituents.

It's important to understand what a merits review body like the AAT is supposed to do. Fundamentally, review bodies provide a critical check on government decisions. They ensure that government decisions are right in all circumstances. They review Medicare decisions, Centrelink decisions, NDIS decisions, veterans' affairs decisions and immigration decisions. Every single one of us in this place should know the impact of those decisions on our constituents. There should be a 'merits review' tribunal to review those decisions. A tribunal like this has the capacity to have a profound influence on the lives of our constituents, yet to those opposite it became a nursery school for defeated political ambition. That was incredibly and profoundly wrong, because an institution that has such a significant impact on the lives of Australians should not be tainted by political bias. An institution with that great an impact on the public has to maintain the confidence of the public.

That's not to say that there is anything innately wrong with someone with a political affiliation getting a job in one of these review tribunals—of course not. The problem is the sheer number of political appointments made without any sort of selection process. If those opposite really think this is okay, then come in here and defend each of those appointments without merit that you made. Defend the fact that there was no merit based recruitment process. But you won't hear that here, because those opposite, deep down, know that this was a really grubby thing to do. Sure, they got away with it for many years, but even they won't defend it.

So it falls to this Labor government to do its best to bolster the public 's faith in the institutions of government. We have seen, with the establishment of the National Anti-Corruption Commission—something that those opposite again failed to do—that this is a government serious about the task ahead of us.

We know that on top of the problem of appointing candidates without a proper selection process there were a number of problems with the AAT. Previous attempts at amalgamating the separate review tribunals into a single unified tribunal have largely been unsuccessful. Funding for our merits review tribunal has not always met the level required by the caseload it has. This resulted in a significant backlog of cases, meaning that people were waiting months or years for the final decision. That's why in December 2022 the Attorney-General laid out a vision for an overhaul of the AAT, signalling a move towards a new administrative review body that promises to be user focused, efficient, accessible and, most importantly, independent and fair. In seeking to establish a new Administrative Review Tribunal the Attorney-General has sought to take on board the many reviews, new and old, and consult as widely as possible to look at how this new tribunal ought to operate. In April last year the government conducted a public consultation on reform to review the system, which received 280 survey responses and 120 submissions. At the same time, former High Court justice Patrick Keane led an expert advisory group to provide advice on this reform. The bill we have before us has gone through the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs, capably led by the member for Macquarie. It recommended that this House pass the ART Bill without amendment. The committee also encouraged the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee to give further consideration to the matters raised by the House committee. The Senate committee is due to report back in mid-2024.

This bill will transition the old AAT to a new system as smoothly as possible. Matters that are currently heard by the AAT will remain unaffected. Current staff will transition to the new body, and existing members of the AAT will be invited to apply for positions in accordance with the new merit based appointment system, which probably should have always been in place. That merit based selection process, which will be publicly advertised, will be based on a specific set of criteria, not on how close a mate you are to someone sitting among those opposite. We will evaluate the extent to which prospective applicants possess the necessary skills, expertise, experience and knowledge for tribunal duties.

The bill will give the president powers to manage member performance and, importantly, it will afford the president power to ensure that the tribunal is a safe and respectful workplace. For our constituents, it will strengthen the tribunal 's objective of providing an accessible body that is responsive to the multitude of physical and linguistic needs in our communities. This bill does the hard work of rebuilding public trust in our key institutions—the very foundation of our democracy depends on it. Surely that is something that everyone in this place can get behind. For the sake of all Australians, it's time to recognise and reward merit, not mateship.

See this speech in context