Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Labor does not support this amendment. Senator Patrick has argued that this amendment would ban political appointments, but that is not the case. It would simply limit the Liberals to appointing mates who have law degrees. Indeed, many of the Liberal mates the government has appointed to the tribunal have been lawyers. There are many examples of this, including William Frost, who is now paid $250,000 of taxpayers' money each year. He went straight from Mr Porter's office to his plum new job on the tribunal. William Frost is a lawyer. For all we know, he may be a very good lawyer and he may even be a highly competent tribunal member. I note Senator Seselja assures us he's a very good lawyer, so now I'm wondering. But his appointment, along with the appointment of so many other mates of Christian Porter and other ministers of this government, gives rise to an understandable perception in the community that the tribunal is not independent of government, that it is not fair and that it is not impartial. Senator Patrick's amendment would not address that problem.

It is a significant amendment, but not for the reasons Senator Patrick suggests. The AAT is not a court; it's a merits review tribunal. The role of a tribunal member is to stand in the shoes of the original decision-maker, such as a minister or a senior public servant. Ministers and senior public servants are not required to be lawyers or certified accountants, so why should all tribunal members—people who are required to stand in the shoes of the original decision-maker—have to be lawyers? There is a legitimate and important debate that we could have about whether the AAT should be more like a court in terms of who sits on it. Perhaps, as Senator Patrick suggests, the tribunal should be made up of only lawyers. Perhaps the parliament should say that 90 per cent of tribunal members must be lawyers or that certain divisions of the AAT should only be made up of lawyers whereas other divisions could have greater diversity. These are legitimate questions, but they are weighty ones. Just to ask these questions is to illustrate that Senator Patrick's amendment has significant implications for the tribunal which extend well beyond the problem of political appointments.

Labor has been consistent in calling out the government on its brazen stacking of the AAT, and we'll continue to do so. Over the last eight years, about 80 Liberal mates have been appointed to the tribunal, many of them lawyers. It's a shameful record and it has done great damage to the tribunal and to the standing of the tribunal in the community. Any suggestion that Labor did it too is completely false. In fact, over the six-year period when Labor was last in government, only two people with Labor connections were appointed to the tribunal, and both were highly qualified and uncontroversial appointments which enjoyed bipartisan support. As it happens, they were also both lawyers. One was Duncan Kerr SC, a fantastic appointment warmly welcomed by the then shadow Attorney-General George Brandis. The other is now an associate professor of law, Linda Kirk, another appointment supported by the Liberals.

Labor has always maintained that membership of a political party is not a disqualification for appointment to the tribunal. But, under the Liberals, it has become the main qualification, and the tribunal has been turned into a taxpayer-funded gravy train for Liberal mates as a result. There are 80 Liberal mates in secure jobs, collectively taking home many millions in taxpayers dollars each year. It's a disgrace. There is nothing in section 7 or anywhere else in the AAT Act that requires the Liberals to stack the tribunal, and the amendment proposed by Senator Patrick would not stop them from stacking the tribunal with more of their mates. The best way to stop political appointments to the AAT is not to support this amendment; it's to vote the Liberals out at the next election.

Question negatived.