Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It's a pleasure to rise and speak on the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill and related bills. I say to the parliament that this is a lost opportunity for some real reform to our Administrative Appeals Tribunal. Certainly, the idea that we're going to change the name from the AAT to the ART should not be inspiring to most Australians, and the abolishment of the AAT to recreate the same body in the ART really isn't an attempt at improving the administrative efficiency of our administrative appeals system.

There has been a lot of naivete in this debate, and I wouldn't mind that so much from backbenchers—maybe the member for Reid is very new. A lot of that was very naive. She's reading the points given to her by the Labor Party's whip. But the Attorney-General has been in this place a long time, and, if the Attorney-General wanted to put a bill forward to reform the AAT to make sure that there were no political mates, he could have done that bill. This bill will not achieve that; there will still be politically aligned people on the ART instead of the AAT.

It seems to me that the Attorney-General's principal objection to the AAT was that they lost four elections in a row and that they didn't get to appoint anybody, so they'd like to clear the slate and start again with people that are more aligned to the way that they think. That might be his prerogative in government, but it's really sanctimonious for members of the Labor Party to come and speak on this bill and say: 'This will revolutionise the system. It's all going to be just merit now; there will be no political mates.'

I'd say to the member for Reid, who I just heard, and others who've been making this point endlessly: what was the merit based selection criteria for the appointment of the Ambassador to the United States, Kevin Rudd? What merit based system did you go to? They haven't mentioned that they're outraged about that appointment by their own government. You can argue the rights or wrongs of the appointment of Kevin Rudd. Certainly, if there's a Republican regime in coming months, it may be a very bad appointment for Australia. But can any Labor member say to the Australian public that they went through a merit based selection? There wasn't one. So the sanctimony, I think, is misplaced. But my point about the construction of this bill and the consequential amendments that the government has put forward is that they lack any rigor in actually doing anything about the administrative appeals system.

To speak to many of the objections that people have made here, again, I think they are very ill informed about the migration division of the AAT. In one breath, we've got Labor members saying: 'If we go back to several tribunals of appeal, that will be more efficient, but we're really upset that there's a huge backlog and that this one system has produced this huge backlog.' But if we go back to four or five tribunals then somehow there'll be more efficiency? None of it makes any sense because it is not real reform. They haven't taken the time to do real reform.

I say to the member for Indi: she's well motivated, but she's right to reserve her judgement about these reforms, which is what she has done. She's right because her instinct is correct. This will not address the problems that exist with the AAT. I'm happy to speak to some of those cases in the migration division, because they are important, and the missed opportunity of this government in not really consulting the parliament, in rushing through the process and changing the name or abolishing the AAT while recreating it with a different letter in the middle. It's almost like one of those shows on politics. It is not real reform.

In migration, and under the Migration Act, the truth is that many people appeal to the AAT—or through the old MRT—deliberately to delay the resolution of their visa status in Australia. That's the finding of the AAT itself, when it backs up the government's decision-makers 80 to 90 per cent of the time. The backlog comes about in migration because people are deliberately gaming our system. So, unlike the member of Wentworth, who says that we should provide financial assistance to people that are noncitizens who want to apply to appeal decisions of our own decision-makers and therefore give them money to apply against us when they're deliberately trying to stay, we need to get that case load dealt with much more efficiently, because there are genuine people that need administrative review in visa decisions. Every one of those genuine people is hurt by the many people who are applying who are not genuine in their application for administrative review.

There is nothing in these bills that will improve or seek to improve that huge case load that is deliberately there to delay resolution in Australia of their visa. This even applies to serious criminals, which is a matter that has been before this parliament for many months. These applicants seek administrative appeal against our government once they're convicted of serious crimes. Why? To delay their removal from Australia. Then they go to the court—to the highest court, in many cases. Having served in the executive in a ministerial role in the space, I can say that most of the cases I saw were the deliberate delay and gaming of our system, at a cost to the taxpayer—tying up our court system, tying up our administrative appeal system and not allowing genuine cases to be dealt with expeditiously.

There is no serious attempt to reform this system. In government we couldn't reform it, and I'll tell you why we couldn't reform it: because the Labor Party would always hold up any reform, because they never allowed migration bill amendments to go through without years of contemplation or scrutiny. They must know, now that they're in government, that this case load of people who are not genuine and who are applying to delay their departure from Australia to stay here longer is tying up our administrative appeals system. But they do nothing. These bills are silent about them.

The teals say we should give money to more people to do it faster. I can say to you that there are too many decisions that are appealed to our Administrative Appeals Tribunal that need no such treatment. I'll give you an example of what comes before a minister's desk, because parliament needs to understand this. If a student misses their deadline to apply for a new student visa to stay in Australia—let's say they miss it by five minutes—that will work its way through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and come before the minister for a ministerial intervention. What a cosmic waste of time and resources of the department, of the person and of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. We need a simpler, more efficient bureaucratic decision that says, 'Okay, on student visas, you're five minutes past the deadline—you're in or you're out'. We do not need months and years of administrative review or court review of such a simple matter. Where is the reform on that? It needs to be done. We need to move forward. We need to make some real changes to actually address the backlog. If Labor members were interested in this, getting the non-genuine applicants out of our system would be a huge priority.

Regarding protection claims—just to address the teal members who've mentioned that, and, again, the naivete is absolutely breathtaking—most protection claims are found to be non-genuine by our decision-makers, by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and by the courts. An overwhelming number of protection claims in Australia are found to be non-genuine, by every level of review. But the teals say, 'Let's have more applications going in.' That is not the answer to the problem, because who has to pay for that? Well, the taxpayer has to pay for that. Let's look Australians in the eye and say, 'You've got to work harder to pay your taxes'! This is not such a concern to members of teal electorates; they're not too worried about making ends meet or paying tax; there's an endless pool in some of these wealthy electorates. But people who are struggling have to work harder to pay the bills for people who are not Australians and who are claiming protection under false premises. Most of the cases are false. We have to be open about this conversation. Most are false; they are not genuine claims.

And to the member for Wentworth, who cited an LGBTQI person, I'd say that is a very serious issue. There are issues for people applying for protection from mostly countries under sharia law—Islamic countries, for example. They need protection from their own governments, because these are not rights based societies. They apply to Australia. But there are a lot of people who fake their claims—people who say they are LGBTQI not because they are but because they have decided to make that up for the purposes of their application. There are people who claim they are Christian when they are Muslim. The AAT's and the decision-maker's job is clear in trying to resolve how those non-genuine cases are decided so we can get to the cases like the example the member for Wentworth raised, of a genuine LGBTQI person needing genuine protection.

It is in the interests of this House, in the interests of this parliament and in the interests of the government to have reform to stop these non-genuine applicants from applying and creating these backlogs—delay, cost, difficulty. I would counsel the member for Wentworth not to listen just to the Law Council on this, because this is the greatest lawyers picnic in the history of Australia. Lawyers make tonnes of money off the AAT, the court system and the migration appeals division. Lawyers are making truckloads of money off all of this. So, I wouldn't just listen to the Law Council's submission about this. I would seek a broader remit.

The truth is that we need to remove some of the options for noncitizens to be applying to the AAT. We need to restrict it further. We need to reduce the administrative burden on our decision-makers and our tribunals so that we get to the genuine appeals and consider the genuine appeals. Any examination of the outcome metrics of any of this—the AAT or the new ART—will be the same, I have no doubt, because anyone reviewing these matters will see that most of these cases are non-genuine. Most of these applications have been put in for a variety of reasons, not necessarily to get a positive outcome. It's in the interests of every member here to get to those people who need genuine administrative review and to get those matters finalised.

The government has failed to bring forward a bill that in any way tackles the serious nature of the case load, the reasons why we have a backlog in this case load and, indeed, the focus on the politicisation of the AAT. Having dealt with it extensively, I would say to you that there are members on the AAT who have come from previous Labor governments whose productivity I was most concerned and remain most concerned about, so I commend this bill where it talks about the ability of the president to work on productivity. These figures should be publicly available and transparent. A person paid this much money—I don't care whether they're appointed by a Liberal or Labor government—should have their performance review made public. If they do not meet the benchmarks of case load or of proper work rate inside the AAT, they should be removed from the AAT, or the ART if this bill is passed by the parliament. That is not available to the public as taxpayers. I think that is scandalous.

In my perception, many members from eras gone by appointed by different governments were the least productive. Some people hid behind a very low case load rate. They would have been there in the AAT a very long time. It was very opaque, even for the government of the day, to get those figures. Transparency is key here, and I would say to the member for Indi that that is the kind of amendment that ought to be required. Transparency on the performance and productivity of individual members, regardless of the government appointing them, would actually lend a better outcome here as well.

So, while we are not opposing this bill, there are some great features here in terms of the ability of the president to make further performance reviews available to members and also deal with members who are not doing their job. The overwhelming nature of this bill is purely administrative. It's abolishing one body; it's changing a letter in the title; it's recreating it; it's keeping the case load the same; it's keeping the pipeline the same; and it's going to allow the government to appoint Labor mates through a fig leaf of a merit based system, but it's not an actual merit based system. So the system will continue, when opportunity lent itself to some actual change and reform that would have improved the ability, especially of Australians, to access administrative appeal. The system will go on. Labor will say: 'We've changed the whole world. We've achieved nirvana. This is now a perfect system.' But it will not be a perfect system. For many members here who are very naive about this: the lawyers will continue to make a packet load of money off of this process, especially through the migration division. The most litigated Commonwealth minister is the migration minister. Lawyers are making a lot of money out of this system.

As a parliament, we do need further reform. We do need these bills to be more robust. We would like to see further amendments and change to the ability of people to take matters to the AAT that simply don't need to be there. Student visas being late by five minutes is an example. These things are not required to go to something with a tribunal-like nature, with a person sitting over them and submissions taken on whether you missed a deadline by five minutes. This is wasting the parliament's time, the government's time, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal's time and the time of a lot of people who have very genuine matters that need to be before administrative review and need thorough consideration. There is too much sitting in front of the AAT, and it will be the same under this bill.

My criticism is primarily that this bill does not attempt to actually improve the system. It has no vision. It is merely a classic government changing the badging that we knew. There will be new branding. It might be cheap in some cases: they might just have to drop 'appeals' off and get 'review' added in gold. Perhaps that's why the government has done it that way, so it's cheap to rebadge it! But rebadging it is a lost opportunity. Not making reforms is a lost reform opportunity. Administrative appeal is an important right. They should be taking a burden off of our courts, not providing a vehicle for people to delay matters and cause deliberate delay to their particular resolution of cases against government. We need to do better, and I urge the government to think harder about review and to actually take some serious steps towards fixing our system and working with the parliament to do so.

See this speech in context