Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2024 and related bills. I'll begin by firstly congratulating Senator Rennick for that contribution. Senator Rennick has a way of cutting through to the core of the matter that I think is of great value to this place. I think I will start where Senator Rennick finished, and that is by asking why. Why are we doing this? What is the stated excuse? What's the stated reason from this Attorney-General? Then I'll look at the reality of the situation.

First, what's the change? The Administrative Appeals Tribunal will become the Administrative Review Tribunal. A billion bucks for one word seems like a lot of money, and I think it would seem that way to the Australian people facing a cost-of-living crisis. The government claimed certain things in its budget but then found $1 billion to turn the AAT into the ART. You have to ask yourself: why? You also have to ask yourself—and this is also a point Senator Rennick made—why now? Why not when this bill was due to come before parliament in a couple of months after the Senate inquiry had had a proper look at it and a chance to report properly? Why have we now got some sort of deal stitched up between the Labor Party and their allies on the crossbench to bring this on and ram it through the parliament this week? As far as I can tell, there is no particular rush for action here. We should be making sure when we're dealing with matters concerning the Australian judicial system—and the AAT is part of our judicial system—that we actually take the time—

Okay, Senator Shoebridge; I'll take that interjection. But most ordinary Australians would consider the AAT to be a part of the framework of laws, rules and processes we have in place for them to challenge government and bureaucratic decisions. So, whilst technically it's not part of the judicial system, most people, most ordinary Australians, would see the AAT as a central part of the way this country ensures fairness and equity for its citizens. As such, that should be one of the things we in this place both hold in high regard and take to with a duty of care that is of the highest level. In dealing with this particular bill in this way, the Labor Party government and those on the crossbench who are going to support them in this guillotine, effectively, are showing a disdain both for the process and, by association, for the people of Australia. You should not handle important issues this way.

It may surprise a lot of people to learn that, contrary to the rhetoric from this Attorney-General and this government, the vast majority of AAT members have been appointed by the Labor Party. So, if they're criticising the members of the AAT, they're actually criticising a lot of their own appointees. It was a transparent process to appoint people to the AAT in that these things were very clear and part of publicly available information. Who are the kinds of people that are apparently being targeted to be purged from the AAT? It's people with master's degrees, people who have been attorneys-general themselves, people with doctorates of law, people with significant qualifications from university and people with significant experience of life as a whole but also significant legal experience. It is ridiculous to say that, in any way, the appointments have not been worthy. The AAT plays a very important role and is something that we should tinker with with great care. So, when we see a billion dollars being spent, with one word in the name 'AAT' being changed, we have to be, rightly, a little bit cynical about what the motives are. Is it just to get rid of a few people that the Labor Party don't like in that particular organisation? If so, I think that is to the great shame of this government and to the great shame of the Attorney-General.

There are three bills here. They abolish a system that provides merits review across the entire Commonwealth statute book and reaches into virtually all portfolios. We're now looking at 692 pages of new primary legislation, with 760 pages of explanatory materials. What has been rushed before this chamber is a package establishing an entirely new administrative review body, plus 33 schedules of amending legislation. These changes literally affect hundreds of Commonwealth acts. It is complex legislation, the impacts of which cannot be known at this point. They cannot. It is simply impossible to know, when you're dealing with legislative change of this nature, the unintended consequences. And, therefore, the potential for negative flow-on effects on the 67,000 cases that are currently on foot could be extraordinary—67,000 cases. That would be hundreds of thousands of individual Australians potentially impacted in a negative way by these changes.

And yet we have had just six hours and 55 minutes of committee hearing, per the program set, of course, by the government—not even one working day for an average working Australian. That it's all the scrutiny there has been for a bill which potentially impacts 67,000 cases, hundreds and thousands of individual Australians, and a significant part of our machinery of government that ensures that administrative decisions are fair to all Australians. One working day—that gives committee members about 40 seconds per page to look at the legislation.

The number of cases at the AAT right now is greater than the number of seconds this Labor dominated committee spent examining the legislation. The Administrative Appeals Tribunal itself had just a 40-minute hearing in front of that committee. That's 40 minutes of evidence from the body that is being wound up, to be replaced by an unknown body—again, potentially affecting 67,000 cases and hundreds of thousands of Australians who are seeking redress through the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

That is not good process. I think it's shameful for those on the crossbench who are holier than thou, who claim to be whiter than white, who claim to be purer than the driven snow on issues of probity and process, to have facilitated the truncation, or the abandonment, effectively, of the inquiry—the truncation of any serious consideration that the committee system could give this legislation, taking it on faith that the Attorney-General has got this right, when, on the face of the legislation itself, he hasn't got it right. He's already had to amend his own legislation. The flaws are there to see, but they're only the flaws that the Attorney-General's Department themselves picked up, or perhaps they were informed of them by a third party. How many more errors are embedded in this legislation that have not yet been picked up because we haven't had a proper committee process?

Now we're debating these measures two months earlier than we should have been, no doubt with a view to passing them through this place. Clearly some sort of deal has been done, otherwise we wouldn't be here talking about this tonight. Somewhere, somehow, behind closed doors, untransparent to anyone in this room—certainly anyone on this side in this room—a deal has been done. We don't know what the content of that deal is. We don't know what has been agreed. We certainly can't be sure that this legislation has had adequate scrutiny, because we know it hasn't.

Again, we know that this legislation is not right. One of the bills is the Administrative Review Tribunal (Consequential and Transitional Provisions No. 2) Bill, which actually makes changes to the ART Bill itself. There is an entire schedule, schedule 16, which makes changes to the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill. It was introduced before the primary bill had even been debated in the House. That's how well the Attorney-General nailed down this legislation before bringing it to this parliament. Before the primary bill was even introduced, an amendment—an entire bill of amendments in fact—had to be introduced as well. Two months after introducing the primary legislation, before a single committee hearing had taken place, he realised there were problems with the bill and introduced a whole suite of changes. These changes did not go to a minor, inconsequential issue. They concern the way the tribunal would deal with preventative detention orders in terrorism cases. The Attorney-General was admitting to major problems with his own legislation. He was telling us through his actions, because of course he is never willing to publicly admit these things, that the ART Bill was flawed and needed to be changed. That is why scrutiny is so important.

I've got up in this place many times and talked about the importance of the committee process and the importance of the scrutiny role of the Senate in particular with regard to government legislation. It is something that is vitally important, so to see it now being truncated by Labor in alliance with others is I think very telling as to what the priorities of both this government and those of the crossbench are. I think when they say they believe in openness, transparency and proper consideration we all now know how thin, how weak, how pathetic those words really are, because here, where we've got something of such import to the Australian people, we are dispensing with the committee process. We're putting it to one side and saying: 'No, we're just going to stop doing that. A deal has been done behind closed doors. Let's pass the legislation.' I think that's a great shame on this place and I would ask those who are going to do that to reconsider. Allow the committee process to continue its work, allow it to complete its inquiry properly, and then let's come back here and debate this bill properly.