Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Hansard source

And a consequential amendments bill that is longer than either. Now, we simply didn't have the time to scrutinise this legislation as well as I would have hoped or probably others in this place would have liked, and that should be a matter for reflection. This isn't a comment just made by me as a senator in this place. There was an abbreviated House of Representatives committee process that was instigated just before Christmas, with submissions due on 18 January. Is that a good idea? There are hundreds of pages of legislation, hundreds of pages of explanatory memoranda—it's very complicated legislation—and you start the inquiry in mid-December with submissions by mid-January. What's wrong with that! It was actually held up as a positive that this bill was subject to an inquiry in the House of Representatives and an inquiry in the Senate. We would have been better off having an inquiry instituted in the Senate back in mid-December—having one inquiry that provided sufficient time. But, unfortunately, that, no doubt, is out of the hands of the majority government members on the committee and is in the hands of the Attorney-General. So the Attorney-General can reflect upon that.

My second point is that this Senate asked the committee to report by 24 July. That's over two months away, and the reporting day was brought forward on very short notice—again, I'm not reflecting on the majority members of the committee—such that I as the deputy chair had one clear business day to look at the majority report. One clear business day—I had Friday. I got the majority report late on Thursday. I had Friday to look at it, and I had to get my report in to the secretariat by 9.30 on Monday morning. I did my best, and I did my best to cover as many issues as I could that weren't covered in detail in the majority report, but that is not a satisfactory process.

There are matters which should have been dealt with in the majority report—really substantial matters, which I'll get to—which weren't touched upon in detail in the majority report. From my perspective, again, that is far from best practice.

I had asked for certain witnesses to be called to public hearings, but, because of the lack of time which Senator Cash referred to, I didn't even have time to ask questions of witnesses who I'd asked to be called. I mean, that's embarrassing! It's embarrassing for us as an institution. And I apologise to those witnesses and I do thank them for the submissions they made, because they were detailed submissions.

The second point I want to make is around the case for reform. I'm glad—I really am glad—that there are people in the public gallery who are hearing this. I like an audience, Acting Deputy President; don't we all! This is what the government said in justification of this reform. I want to read these statements out and then I want to tell you what the objective evidence is. See if you can pick the difference. The majority report says:

The regime—

the Administrative Appeals Tribunal—

had lost the confidence of all stakeholders and the merits review system was badly in need of a complete overhaul.

That's what the majority report says. And the Attorney-General said:

… the AAT no longer enjoys the trust and confidence of the Australian community it serves, and is not fit-for-purpose.

Those are pretty dramatic statements, and I would have thought that, if you're prepared to make those statements, you should also be prepared to consider the objective evidence. That evidence would include how the people who actually use the AAT, the Australians who go through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, judge the AAT themselves—their satisfaction rates. But that wasn't referred to at all in the majority report. Those in the gallery and those listening can go to the AAT's annual report and look at the evidence themselves. It wasn't even referred to in the majority report. It won't be referred to in any of the speeches, I'm sure. I'm not Nostradamus, but I'm sure it won't be referred to in any of the speeches from government senators.

I want to put this on record. In the annual report for the year ending 30 June 2023—at the time when the Attorney was attacking the AAT, saying that it had lost the confidence of all Australians and was a disgrace—the overall result for user experience with the AAT was a rating of 72 per cent. Now, does that sound like an organisation that had 'lost the confidence of all stakeholders'—a rating of 72 per cent? And the KPI was 70 per cent.