Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Small and Family Business, Skills and Vocational Education representing the Minister for Home Affairs, concerning the Callinan review of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The Minister for Home Affairs has been a strident critic of the AAT for overruling departmental decisions to deport assorted terrorists, paedophiles, drug smugglers, Iranian holiday-makers and criminals.

The minister also asserted that individual AAT members' decisions reflected which government appointed them to the tribunal. The government commissioned a statutory review by the Hon. Ian Callinan, AC, QC, which was due on 31 October. The News Corp media reported yesterday that the review scorches the AAT as a bloated bureaucracy, bogged by refugee advocates gaming the system and, among other reforms, proposes restricting the production of late evidence. When will we and the Australian people see the Callinan report?