Rex Patrick (SA, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Some of those examples you just provided, I recall, are actually reasons under the Administrative Decisions (Judicial Review) Act and in fact are questions of law, so a question as to whether or not the decision-maker gave relevance to information that was irrelevant or didn't give relevance to information that was irrelevant. Again, those sorts of things would normally require a decision.

Just to get an understanding of how this might work—and it also goes to Senator Wong's amendment—there was a series done a long time ago by, I think, the Law Reform Commission that looked at better decision-making in an administrative sense. It basically said that all decisions should be set out in writing. I am just differentiating that from being made public at this point. But, if you make a decision, you make a better decision if you write out the reasonings yourself so that you understand exactly what you have included in the information. If you do get to a point where a matter is brought before a court, that might become relevant. Is it the case that in making decisions under this bill—notwithstanding limited or no review rights in the AAT, for example—the intention is that you would record the decision reasoning for file purposes?