Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

As Senator Ray says, it is a nice argument—try that out on the High Court, which is also unelected. It is a nice rhetorical flourish, I appreciate that. We are all elected; they are not. That does not mean that we can do whatever we want and everyone else can get lost. We do have a system of checks and balances in our Constitution and in our political system. It is not as strong as I would like it to be, but it is still there. Again, I point to the danger of the slippery slope—if you adopt the argument that this is a difficult, complex decision and if I make it as an elected official then someone who is unelected cannot tell me I am wrong. I am sorry, but that is not really my idea of checks and balances or my idea of accountability and scrutiny. It is my idea of quite a dangerous precedent, particularly if that is the reason given for that precedent.

If there is some other reason—for example, if it is a problem for environmental protection, national security or something like that or if there needs to be certainty in decisions and no merits review; there are areas in other acts where merits review of some decisions is not allowed, including the Migration Act—then let us put that reason. But to just say, ‘I am an elected official and the AAT is not, so it should not be able to overturn my complex and sensitive decisions,’ is not only a flimsy but quite a dangerous precedent to put in place. I note that the committee in its report says:

The committee finds the explanation that such important and complex decisions ‘should not be able to be overturned by an unelected tribunal such as the AAT’ obscure.

It is an interesting word to apply—‘obscure’. I can think of words other than ‘obscure’ but it certainly suggests the committee is less than satisfied with the adequacy of the explanation put forward by the minister. I again urge all senators to read this report. I am sure all senators regularly read the Scrutiny of Bills Committee reports but perhaps occasionally they may have fallen short of doing so, particularly in recent times with all the other work to do. If they have fallen out of the habit of reading every single Scrutiny of Bills Committee report, I suggest that if there is one that they are going to read it should be this one, and if they are going to read it they should do it pretty soon. If this legislation comes on for debate within the next day or so, some of these matters, frankly, should not pass without further scrutiny and examination in the committee stage of the debate. I hope that at least some of them are not allowed to pass into law at all.

Question agreed to.