Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to say that we welcome the creation of this new body to replace the AAT—especially, as I said before, given the political stacking by the former coalition government. It should never have been possible to appoint political mates, especially those without legal qualifications, to a federal tribunal responsible for hearing cases on social security and migration—matters which can often be literally life and death for people.

Delays in the AAT are very real, and it is hoped that this new tribunal is not characterised by these delays in the same way. The Administrative Review Tribunal will be an extremely high-volume tribunal, which will have an impact each year on tens of thousands of individuals and families. There are a number of defects with the legislation as drafted, which we believe will need to be remedied. This new body will be in place for decades and will have a broad jurisdiction to deal with critically important matters relating to people's rights and entitlements under federal law. We cannot afford to rush it or get this wrong.

We have worked with stakeholders, including the Centre for Public Integrity, to address the bill's provisions for fixing appointments to the new body to make these measures mandatory, rather than optional, and it's good to see amendments from the government to that effect, as this was a key promise by the ALP regarding the new tribunal. It's extremely positive that, after significant public pressure and growing political opposition, the government amendments will now go some way to addressing this. The Greens have consistently advocated for a proper review of the operation of this new tribunal. We have been joined in this by numerous NGOs and engaged stakeholders. The government is now responding to that pressure by bringing amendments in to require such a review.

One of the core requirements for support of this bill is that it cannot cause harm, especially to some of the most vulnerable existing users of the AAT. As drafted, this bill does not meet that test, by abolishing critical review rights for people on Centrelink. The Greens believe it is necessary to preserve the existing two-tier jurisdiction to resolve appeals from Centrelink or Services Australia. This existing two-tier review process is critical to providing a just remedy for some 10,000 to 12,000 of the most vulnerable applicants each year. The government has sought to move a large number of amendments on this issue, and our Senate team is working them through. While they appear to go some way towards reinstating the original two-tier review process, the drafting is somewhat opaque and it is unclear how they will achieve this goal in practice.

There remain multiple elements in this reform that provide unfair outcomes for refugee and migration cases in this new body. While there are some modest improvements to the existing law, such as the abolition of the IAA, it continues to have multiple unfair non-discretionary time frames and unfair adverse inferences in this part of its jurisdiction. Assessing the real impact of these amendments is a complex task with an already incredibly lengthy and convoluted bill that has hundreds and hundreds of accompanying pages of text in the explanatory memorandum and in the transitional provisions.

As noted above, this is a generational reform and we need to take the time to get this right. While we will be supporting the bill and not opposing any government amendments in this House, we reserve our position in the Senate. To that end, we will continue to be guided by the valuable input of stakeholders and by two core principles— that this reform must leave no-one behind and must leave no door open for future governments to undermine its integrity.

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