Anthony Chisholm (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Fiona Meagher resigned as president of the AAT last year, and Senator Cash now wants to confect some kind of outrage around this. Why is that? Fiona Meagher was appointed to the AAT without any merit based selection process, and who was responsible? You guessed it—Senator Cash, as Attorney-General. Over nine years, Senator Cash and other Liberal attorneys-general appointed at least 85 other Liberal MPs, failed Liberal candidates, former Liberal staffers and close Liberal associates without any merit based selection process whatsoever. Senator Cash and the Liberal Party's motives are clear. This order for the production of documents is about protecting the Liberal Party's shameless stacking of the AAT. The Senate should not support Senator Cash's self-interested and disingenuous efforts to protect some of the most disgraceful exhibitions of political cronyism Australia has ever seen, which has come at enormous expense to taxpayers and to the credibility of Australia's administrative law more generally.