After years of destructive political ‘stacking’, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) will be dismantled and replaced with a new federal review body. Under previous Coalition governments, appointments to the AAT were often politicised, with appointees securing positions based on Liberal party affiliation, rather than relevant expertise.
The Albanese government has made the decision to abolish the AAT, with Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus condemning its reputation as “irreversibly damaged”. In its place, the government will establish a new administrative review body with a focus on “a transparent and merit-based selection process”.
What is the AAT?
The AAT is an entity responsible for the independent review of administrative government decisions – for example, granting or declining visas, age pensions, compensation for veterans, NDIS funding and much more. The key word here is ‘independent’.
Under the leadership of past Coalition governments, the selection process to the AAT was not transparent, and dozens of former Liberal MPs, failed Liberal candidates, former staffers and other Liberal associates were appointed to the job. This compromised the fairness of the body, with decisions more likely to be made to align with Liberal policy goals, rather than in an objective manner.
A key example of this was in the Migration and Refugee Division (MRD) of the AAT. The MRD makes up 83% of the AAT’s workload, reviewing various decisions made in the process of seeking asylum in Australia. Under the Abbott government, pro bono legal assistance for asylum seekers was cancelled, and the MRD was significantly under-resourced – a pattern followed by the Morrison government.
Alongside these decisions, politicised AAT appointments resulted in the average time for AAT review of protection visa applications jumping from 31 weeks to over 3 years in the period 2017-2022. Dreyfus has summed up the downfall of the AAT as a “uniquely disgraceful exhibition of political cronyism”.
Coalition ‘stacking’ of the Tribunal
The ‘cronyism’ of the AAT is well-documented, and has only increased over recent years.
Progressive think tank The Australia Institute found that while people with political connections made up about 5% of AAT appointments under the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments, the same applied to over a third of appointments under Morrison. The same research revealed that 25% of senior AAT officials who were political appointees had no legal qualifications.
One such person is Michael Cooke, who was appointed to the AAT in 2015, and promoted to senior member two years later. Cooke has no legal or political qualifications – prior to his appointment he was a flight attendant, a schoolteacher and a steel worker.
But he was also a close confidant of Tony Abbott – and remains so, as evidenced by his disparaging barrage against Abbott’s competitor Zali Steggall in the 2019 state election. Commenting under Facebook posts made by a local newspaper, Cooke called Steggall a “total fraud”, “cult queen”, “weird”, and a “fake climate warrior”.
Most recently, the Morrison government came under fire last March for rushing through 19 new appointments to the AAT just days before the federal election was called. Then-Attorney-General Michaelia Cash appointed a raft of former Liberal MPs and staffers to new positions in the body, and extended the terms of 26 more.
Among the new appointees were ex-NSW Liberal minister Pru Goward, who infamously referred to low-income Australians as ‘proles’ in a 2021 column. She was awarded a five-year term to judge AAT appeals – often made by those very same ‘proles’.
The new body proposed by the Albanese government will aim to “[restore] trust and confidence in Australia’s system of administrative review”, with legislation to establish the board most likely introduced later this year.
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