Cartoons of the Week

 

Cathy Wilcox

David Pope

Mark David

Cartoons of the Week

 

Mark David

Jon Kudelka

Mainstream media in broad agreement over parlous state of the Liberal Party of Australia?

The day after the Aston by-election The Guardian ran with this headline: Wipeout beckons for Liberals after Aston byelection and the problem is not just Peter Dutton and raised the possibility of leadership change along with the need for sensible emissions policy and a rejection of culture war issues.

Two days after the by-election this appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald on Page 9:

Peter Dutton says he's determined to rebuild the Liberal Party after its weekend defeat in Aston. That's necessary but insufficient. It needs a personality transplant too.

And it's not as simple as replacing Dutton. He is merely the current face of a party that has chosen to make itself inherently unattractive.

Kelly O'Dwyer, then-federal minister for women, explained to her Liberal colleagues in 2018 that the party was widely seen by the voters as being "homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers".

And that was when Malcolm Turnbull was leader. It wasn't about the leader - it was the collective personality of the party.

What's changed? Today you could probably add the perception that it's anti-transgender and anti-Indigenous as well. From being merely unattractive, the party is now on course to make itself irrelevant to contemporary Australia.

A byelection is a chance for the people to lodge a protest against a government. Instead, on Saturday the people of Aston lodged a protest against the opposition. That's what made it so extraordinary.

Extraordinary yet, if the Liberals read their own official review of last year's federal defeat, unsurprising: "The Coalition now holds its lowest proportion of seats as a share of the House of Representatives since the Liberal Party first ran in a federal election in 1946."

The review authors - former federal director Brian Loughnane and sitting Victorian Senator Jane Hume - said this was merely the latest in a continuing trend: "Many of the problems identified have been constants for a decade or more."

And now Aston. The byelection results make it impossible for the Liberals to console themselves with any of the shallow rationalisations they've been telling themselves since Scott Morrison led them to disaster in May.

First, it's clear that the problem wasn't just Morrison. He's gone, but the problem only gets worse.

Second, it wasn't simply the "it's time" problem afflicting a nine-year-old government. Because it's no longer in government and yet the electors continue to withdraw support.

Third, the Liberals can no longer tell themselves that their problem is strictly one of teal independents taking votes from them. The teals took six traditional wealthy Liberal seats at last year's federal election. Hardcore right-wingers in the party consider these to be votes lost to the "left".

But in losing Aston, the Liberals lost a middle-class, middle-income, mortgage belt seat. The Liberals are losing not only traditional, principled, wealthy Liberals. They are losing women, young people, the cities. In other words, they are losing Australia…..

IMAGE: The Guardian, 21 March 2023

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s (pictured left) national flagship since July 1964, The Australian, went a little further than this. It appears to indicate that he may be slowly resigning himself to seeing his tame conservative politicians spending years in the wilderness.

However neither the 92 year-old mogul nor the editor are going down without a fight. Bottom line: it’s all the fault of unseen global forces, the 'Left' and a blindly ignorant populace. Nothing to do with the mismanagement, misadventures and often downright corruption of conservative politicians whenever they are in office around the world.

Weekend Australian, 1 April 2023, p. 21, excerpts:

Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor, Conservatives fail dismally worldwide and in Australia

Centre-right parties no longer set the agenda across Western democracies

Whatever the result of the critical Aston by-election, conservative politics is in the midst of a crippling, perhaps mortal, crisis within Australia, and around the Western and democratic world.

In Australia, conservatives hold office neither nationally nor in any mainland state or territory. Worse, they seem intellectually and politically exhausted, and don’t look as if they’re on the brink of posing a serious electoral challenge in any jurisdiction. Peter Dutton is a substantial politician but he is miles behind Anthony Albanese. Most Coalition state leaders are anonymous and ineffective.

But they’re in good company internationally. For some version of the same crisis is evident in most democratic nations from North America to Europe. There are a few exceptions but the tide is mostly out for conservatives. Of course, politics mostly runs in cycles. And conservative wisdom will be needed again, eventually.

But today conservative ideas don’t set the agenda. The conservative crisis is part of a larger crisis throughout Western civilisation. In time, the centre-left parties that rule will face their own crisis because without exception they are leading the nations they govern to live way beyond their means. They are also indulging ideological dynamics that are intensely destructive in the long term.

The last great conservative era was the 1980s. Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and even Malcolm Fraser all led self-confident conservative governments. The world’s most authoritative moral figure was Pope John Paul II, a theological and social conservative and communism’s worst nightmare……

The broad cultural crisis in the West is multifaceted. There is the loss of belief in God. There is the associated loss of belief in institutions and all traditional sources of social authority. There is the particular toxic hangover of Covid that taught Western electorates the worst, most dangerous and fraudulent lesson in public policy, that government money is effectively limitless, all demands can be met by more more government spending, endlessly increasing debt. As important as all that, we’ve also had several generations go through school and university education that imparts a message of near hatred, certainly contempt and condemnation, of their own society and history.

The climate change issue is linked to the idea that everything about Western society is rotten, if not downright evil. Some version of this is widespread in elite media. Hostile foreign nations do their bit by clandestinely spreading internal hostilities and divisions on social media. And the fiscal delusions fostered by Covid spending feed into the idea that nations can afford any cost that climate measures impose.

Australia’s conservative politicians have been strikingly unsuccessful. On the odd occasion they form government, they do more or less nothing. You cannot blame conservative politicians for the transformation of the ambient culture. The institutions and consensus on which they rested – family, church, patriotism, hard work, living within your means – are all under constant attack. But this environment means, more than ever, conservative politicians must fight for the things they believe in. They must advocate more energetically, more courageously, more passionately, with as much sophistication and good humour as they can muster. If they do that, they might be surprised at the influence they can still have on institutions. If, on the other hand, they surrender to the zeitgeist they will surely lose the arguments and the elections. As Australia’s greatest modern conservative says: “A lot of conservatives have lost the will to argue a case.”

NEWSPOLL APRIL 2023: Dutton's dismal leadership does not impress the average voter

 

Hot on the heels of the Liberal Party loss in the Aston by-election "The Australian" released its latest YouGov Newspoll.

The headline statistic was the preference flows based on survey respondents stated voting intentions on 2 April combined with recent federal and state elections.

Two Party Preferred Graph 28 Jan 2019 to 2 April 2023

Click on image to enlarge

Labor Party 55 (+1) to Liberal-Nationals Coalition 44 (-1) on 2 April 2023

Five days before the last federal election held on 25 May 2022, the two party preferred numbers had Labor standing at 53 (-1) and Liberal-Nationals at 47 (+1).

Primary/First Preference voting intentions on 2 April 2023 

Labor 38 (+1)

Liberal-Nationals 33 (-2)

Greens 10 (no change)

One Nation 8 (+1)

 Better/Preferred Prime Minister

Antony Albanese 58 (+4)

Peter Dutton 26 (-2)

Unsure 16 (-2)

Albanese has outstripped Dutton as better/preferred prime minister by a wide margin in every Newspoll since the 21 May 2022 election.

Click on image to enlarge

Leaders Approval Rating

Anthony Albanese - Approve 56 (+1)  Disapprove 35 (-3)

Peter Dutton - Approve 35 (-2)  Disapprove 48 (no change) 

It would appear that in the estimation of the national electorate, Peter Dutton and the Liberal-Nationals Coalition he has led for the last ten months rate even lower than Scott Morrison and the Liberal-Nationals team he led to a loss of national government on 21 May 2022.

  

In which Liberal & Nationals MPs behaved badly in the Australian House of Representatives over three consecutive days....

 

Presumably at the direction of the Coalition Leader or the manager of Opposition business in the House at approximately 5:40pm on Tuesday 28 March 2023 Liberal and Nationals MPs began leaving the Chamber to avoid participating in one of the votes conducted during the passage of the Social Security (Administration) Amendment (Income Management Reform) Bill 2023.

During this piece of self-indulgent performative politics, Liberal MP for Wannon & former Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment Dan Tehan, Liberal MP for Hume & former Minister for Industry, Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor, Liberal MP for Canning & former Assist. Minister for Defence Andrew Hastie, Liberal-National MP for Wide Bay & former Deputy-Speaker Llew O’Brien, Liberal MP for Flinders Zoe McKenzie, Liberal-National MP Ted O’Brien and, Nationals MP for Nicholls Sam Birrell, demonstrated disrespectful, juvenile, boorish and dangerous behaviour…..

Clips of the incident from yesterday, where Coalition members pushed their way our of the House of Reps after the speaker called for the doors to be locked (with about 6 minutes of inconsequential division time cut from the middle). pic.twitter.com/zfmEB3JRa0

— Michael Mazengarb (@MichaelM_ACT) March 28, 2023

House of Representatives Hansard, Tuesday 28 March 2023 at 5:41pm, excerpt:

The SPEAKER (17:41): Before we go any further, I wish to 

call the Leader of the House, and I want absolute

silence for this.

Mr BURKE (Watson—Minister for Employment and  Workplace Relations, Minister for the Arts and Leader of the House) (17:41): I am not in a position to name individual members of parliament, but we as a House cannot be in a situation—out of respect for the staff who work in this building—where, when you ask people to lock the doors, they have members of parliament physically pushing past them to get out of the room. There are standing orders that are quite specific in terms of people's obligation. Once you say, 'Lock the doors,' at that moment people have to move to the seats and pick a side or do as some members did, quite appropriately, and take the advisers' boxes.

Mr Speaker, regardless of Practice and standing orders, we cannot be in a position, as a House, where people are using their physical size to push past the members of staff after you have said, 'Lock the doors.' It would be

appreciated if you could review the video. It would also be appreciated if the members involved reported directly to you so that you can work out what the appropriate action is.

The SPEAKER (17:42): I shall be taking the issue very seriously. I will report back to the House.

And all seven were forced to publicly apologise on the floor of the House…...

https://youtu.be/q_8SWGJ5A0o?t=114

House of Representatives, Hansard, Wednesday 29 March 2023 at 9:01am, excerpt:

STATEMENT BY THE SPEAKER

Parliamentary Standards

The SPEAKER (09:01): Before we proceed with business today, I want to address a very serious and grave incident that occurred during a division yesterday afternoon. I thank the Leader of the House for raising this incident with me at the time. After the bells had been rung, I ordered that the doors be locked. After I gave this order, I am aware that a number of members exited the chamber while one of the attendants was attempting to close and lock the door to the opposition lobby, as directed.

As all members are aware, under standing order 129 after the Speaker orders the doors to be locked no member may enter or leave the chamber until after the division. It does not matter whether the doors have been able to be fully closed, the point at which the order is given from the chair is the point at which no member is allowed to enter or leave the chamber.

The most serious aspect of this incident is that members physically pushed their way past the attendant to get out of the chamber, resulting in the attendant getting hit in the doorframe and hurting their arm. I am particularly disgusted by this behaviour, and I will not tolerate it. For a staff member of this place to be treated in this way when they are simply doing their job is disrespectful and a very serious matter.

I have spoken to the parliamentary staff who were involved or who observed the incident and have reviewed a written report from them. I want to make it clear that I am committed to ensuring that this building and this chamber are safe and respectful places of work for all. No staff member should be hurt in the course of doing their work in service of this House. We all know that members are busy. However, I am sure we would all agree that no member's time is worth more than a staff member's safety.

In light of this issue and other recent issues raised with me, I will be writing to all members with a review to reinforce this and to ensure that members are in no doubt as to their obligations to treat this chamber and parliamentary staff with respect.

The Australian people expect members to maintain the highest of standards in terms of conduct and behaviour. We have been reminded of this in Set the standard: Report on the independent review into commonwealth parliamentary workplaces. For all members and staff, I remind them that the Parliamentary Workplace Support Service, PWSS, supports people affected by serious incidents or misconduct in the parliamentary workplace. This service is available at all hours.

I am now going to give indulgence to members who left the chamber following my order to lock the doors to apologise to the House for their actions.

Mr TEHAN (Wannon) (09:04): Speaker, I left the House as you were saying close the doors, and I apologise for my conduct.

Mr TAYLOR (Hume) (09:04): I apologise to the House, Speaker, for leaving the house after your directions were given.

Mr LLEW O'BRIEN (Wide Bay) (09:04): Mr Speaker, I unreservedly apologise to the House and yourself for leaving after your direction yesterday. I also apologise to the staff, if they were involved in this. Our staff here in the chamber do an incredible job, and one of them is not crowd control. I apologise again for that.

Mr TED O'BRIEN (Fairfax) (09:04): Mr Speaker, I too unreservedly apologise to the House.

Ms McKENZIE (Flinders) (09:05): I apologise to the House, Mr Speaker, for seeking to leave after the Speaker had ordered that the doors be closed. I deeply regret and apologise for any impact caused to the staff member involved.

Mr BIRRELL (Nicholls—Deputy Nationals Whip) (09:05): Mr Speaker, I sought to leave the House after your

order and I unreservedly apologise to you and to the House for that. I have offered an apology to the attendant who was on the door at the time.

Mr HASTIE (Canning) (09:05): Mr Speaker, I also apologise unreservedly to you and to the House for

attempting to leave after the doors were to be locked. I particularly regret any issues with the staff member involved and I apologise to her unreservedly.

It should be noted that only Ms. McKenzie and Messrs. Birrell, L. O’Brien & Hastie offered apologies to the staff. Messrs. Tehan, Taylor & E. O’Brien were markedly less gracious in their apologies.

Let's not bother to go to the office today....

Liberal and Nationals MPs, not content with the performative display on Tuesday 28th decided to repeat their dummy spit for House of Representative cameras two days later.

This is a view of the House as The Speaker Milton Dick enters at 8:59am on Thursday 30 March 2023. The first item of business for the day was the second reading of the bill "Constitution Alteration (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice) 2023".

View of near empty Opposition benches at 9:02am as the Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus begins his second reading speech at 9:02am.

Another view of the House during the Attorney-General's second reading speech showing the Government benches on the near and far right of the image. The near left being sparsely populated Opposition benches (Liberals & Nationals) and far left Independents & minor parties benches. 

View of the House showing Labor, the cross benches and the visitors gallery clapping as the bill was listed as read and mostly silent members of the Opposition immediately leaving the Chamber at 9:21am.

It would appear that the Liberal MPs who did the right thing and were in their seats for the entire second reading process were predominately Opposition backbenchers:

Member for Longman

Member for Monash

Member for Sturt

Member for Forde

Member for Fisher.

They were in the company of three other Liberal MPs - one I took to be the Member for Bradfield, another the Member for Berowra and the third I could not identify.

One could be excused for suspecting that the handful of other Liberal and Nationals MPs who were in the Chamber by the end of the bill's second reading might have belatedly turned up just to avoid any accusation of non-attendance.

Tweet of the Week

 

713 Robodebt mentions in parliament, a Centrelink whistleblower in 2016, protests directly to the Member for Aston’s office and tens of thousands of news pieces. But between the 4 Liberals on the Robodebt Royal Commission they’ve said they ‘don’t recall’ anything 140 times. How? pic.twitter.com/UQ78MYQa3P

— Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) February 8, 2023

 

State of Play 2023: Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme in entering the final tranche of public hearings

 

Public hearings in the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme have been underway since 31 October 2022.

Currently Hearing Block 3 is coming to an end and the final round of public hearings, Hearing Block 4, is due to commence on 20 February 2023.

This week evidence has been heard from a number of significant political & public service 'operatives': 

former Senior Media Adviser, Office of the Minister of Human Services (Aug 2016-Nov 2017), Rachelle Miller; 

former Agency Spokesperson, Department of Human Services (2000?-May 2019) & current Agency Spokesperson, Services Australia, Hank Jongen; 

Liberal MP for Aston & former Minister for Human Services (8.2.2016 to 20.12.2017), Alan Tudge; and, 

former Liberal MP for Pearce & former Minister for Social Services (21.9.2015 to 20.12.2017), Christian Porter.

However, before addressing their sworn testimony, a review of last week's hearings may be in order from journalist Rick Morton.

The Saturday Paper, 28 January 2023:

Evidence heard during one of the most incendiary weeks at the robo-debt royal commission has revealed the extraordinary lengths two federal government departments went to in order to cover up a multibillion-dollar crime that spanned years.

By early 2017, two years after the Centrelink debt fabrication scheme had begun, there were two external agencies with prying eyes threatening to expose the legal fiction on which the entire program rested.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman was investigating, and damning decisions were also coming back in greater numbers from the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Both the Department of Social Services and the Department of Human Services adopted a “pattern of behaviour” that would deliberately mislead the ombudsman, ignore directions from the AAT and conspire to keep the government’s dodgy decisions in-house by refusing to ever challenge them past a first-round loss with the tribunal.

It was this latter strategy – according to Emeritus Professor Terry Carney, who sat on the AAT and a predecessor tribunal for decades until the former Coalition government suddenly ended his tenure in 2017 – that was the main reason robo-debt was “able to operate for so long and at such costs to applicants”.

His evidence and the other evidence given this week is the clearest account yet of the extraordinary efforts the government and its departments went to in the name of continuing a scheme that they knew was unlawful and was raising fake debts. Tens of thousands more people were dragged into the mess while this was known.

“Had there been a public ventilation of what the AAT was ruling, there wouldn’t have been an instant change to, or abandonment of, the scheme,” Carney told the hearing on Tuesday.

“But it would have been a lot quicker than the three or more years that nearly half a million people had to suffer the raising of unlawful debts against them.”

The fact the Commonwealth never appealed against a single decision was “unprecedented”, Carney said. This was even more startling a strategy when it became clear lawyers and appeal branch managers in the Department of Human Services (DHS) knew what was going on and did nothing to change course.

"Everybody needs to understand how many thousands of people were affected so badly by a system that was put in by a government department."

Under Commonwealth model litigant obligations and separate responsibilities enshrined in social security law, the federal government is required to have “due regard” to AAT decisions and should act to contest them where it involves a significant matter of law or policy or where different decisions create “inconsistencies” in the application of policy.

Former DHS appeals branch manager Elizabeth Bundy, a qualified lawyer, told the Royal Commission into the Robodebt Scheme on Tuesday that she probably didn’t read one of Professor Carney’s adverse tribunal decisions that was explicitly sent to her for monitoring “because it was very long and legalistic”.

Emails between Bundy and a lawyer in her team, Damien Brazel, sent in late March 2017, show they understood the significance of the Carney decision because it involved the use of income averaging from the “manual” pilot stage of robo-debt, a domain they say they believed was not an issue.

“We need to escalate this ASAP,” Bundy wrote to Brazel on March 24, suggesting they should inform DHS deputy secretary Malisa Golightly.

The following day, a Saturday, at 8.35pm, Darren Zogopoulos, a manager in DHS, emailed about a “third set aside … decision” with a note of alarm.

“This one is very interesting,” he wrote. “I would be concerned of [sic] legal services didn’t contest this. If they don’t, it will open up Pandora’s Box.”

Not only did they not contest this or any other decision, however, but DHS lawyers met some of the decisions with institutional arrogance……

It is helpful to go through this time line in detail.

The sequence of events begins around January 11, 2017, when DSS officials – including former director of payment integrity and debt strategy Robert Hurman – became aware of the ombudsman’s investigation.

From this date, the fuse of bureaucratic panic was lit.

Within hours, Hurman had been sent the only written advice his department had ever sought about the legality of the scheme: the 2014 advice written by Simon Jordan and second-counselled by senior lawyer Anne Pulford, which was unequivocal in its statement that the fundamental basis of robo-debt was illegal.

What to do?

Greggery laid out the department’s blueprint for deception.

“I suggest to you there was a common understanding within DSS – from the time the ombudsman’s investigation was received – to go on the front foot and defend the scheme as being both lawful and accurate in raising debts,” he said to Hurman.

“There was a pattern of behaviour from the start by people within DSS, of which you were a part, and it was designed to establish the lawfulness of the scheme in the representations that it made to the ombudsman, irrespective of the true position.”

Hurman responded that they “were trying to show it in a positive light”, a description that rankled the senior counsel.

“Yes,” Greggery said, “but it’s a bit hard to put a positive light on something that you understood was being conducted unlawfully according to the advice that had been given in 2014.”

Hurman and colleagues commissioned a new set of legal advice from Pulford, the same lawyer who co-authored the 2014 advice, only this time the answer to ostensibly the same proposition was that income averaging could be used to raise a debt.

This “2017 advice” wasn’t delivered until later in January. Six days before it arrived, on January 18, DSS officials attended a walkthrough with DHS leadership about the robo-debt scheme. About the same time then ministers Alan Tudge and Christian Porter were making public statements asserting the lawfulness of the program.

Although Hurman was on leave for this January 18 walkthrough, he authored an email that stated DSS staff were “comfortable that the current process is lawful and clear”.

Greggery asked how this could have been so. The walkthrough happened after the 2014 advice had been recirculated, noting the scheme was unlawful, and before the new Pulford advice had been received.

“So how could you be satisfied, or how could you represent that senior department staff were comfortable that the current process was both lawful and clear,” Greggery pressed, “in circumstances where you had been given contrary advice?”

Initially, Hurman had believed the original advice should be withheld. After a tense back and forth between the policy and legal teams, a decision was made to send both to the ombudsman.

However, on February 23, Greggery said, Hurman learnt that only the 2017 advice had gone to the ombudsman. The legal opinion acknowledging the scheme was likely unlawful was not sent. Former branch manager Russell de Burgh, Hurman’s boss, accepts that the 2017 advice was the only document the department ever had that could be construed as suggesting the scheme was even remotely lawful…….

Read the full article here.

Administrative Appeals Tribunal became so bloated by Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison Government appointees that Liberal Party cronyism began to eat away at its reputation. It is to be abolished and a new tribunal created in 2023

ABC News, 16 December 2022:

One of the most notoriously politicised bodies, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, will be abolished after the attorney-general declared its reputation had been irreversibly damaged.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the former government made dozens of politicised appointments to the AAT in its time in office, and that he would end the "cronyism".

"By appointing 85 former Liberal MPs, failed Liberal candidates, former Liberal staffers and other close Liberal associates, without any merit-based selection process … the former government fatally compromised the AAT," Mr Dreyfus said.

"Australians rightly expect honesty, integrity and accountability in government."

A new review body will be established in the new year, and already-appointed tribunal members will be invited to continue with it.

For almost 50 years the AAT was tasked with reviewing the decisions of government, including on matters of taxation, immigration and social security.

Appointments to the AAT were made by the government of the day for terms of up to seven years, though members could be re-appointed.

Mr Dreyfus said the new body would have a merit-based process for appointing tribunal members, after he accused the former government of sometimes appointing members to review issues such as taxation despite having no expertise in the area.

"The AAT's dysfunction has had a very real cost to the tens of thousands of people who rely on the AAT each year to independently review government decisions that have major and sometimes life-changing impacts on their lives," Mr Dreyfus said.

"Decisions such as whether an older Australian receives an age pension, whether a veteran is compensated for a service injury or whether a participant in the NDIS receives funding for an essential report."….

Accusations of politicised appointments have been levelled at former governments of all stripes, though progressive think tank The Australia Institute found a significant rise in what it deemed political appointments after the Coalition won office in 2013.

The think tank found around 5 per cent of AAT appointments under the Howard, Rudd and Gillard governments had been made to people with political connections, but that jumped to more than one-third of appointments under the Morrison government.

It also found a quarter of senior AAT members who were political appointments had no legal qualifications.

Plum jobs that paid as much as $500,000 were sometimes offered to people in the dying days of government before a federal election.

Former NSW state Liberal minister Pru Goward, former WA Liberal minister Michael Mischin, and Mr Morrison's former chief of staff Anne Duffield were among those appointed to the AAT in the final days of the Morrison government.

The AAT had also faced several accusations of bullying by its members since 2016.

Bill Browne, The Australia Institute's democracy and accountability director, said reform was urgently needed.

"Whatever body replaces the AAT must be robust and independent, and that means the AAT’s replacement must be carefully designed with an open and transparent appointment process that ensures only qualified, independent members are appointed," Mr Browne said.

Australian Lawyers Alliance spokesman Greg Barns SC welcomed the AAT's abolition.

"Mr Dreyfus has the chance to create a new, impartial and fully independent tribunal that deals with thousands of cases each year involving Centrelink issues, tax issues and military compensation, to name some of the areas," he said.

"Today is a win for the rule of law."

Justice Susan Kenney has been appointed as the acting president of the AAT to guide its transition to the new system.

Mr Dreyfus said the new review body would be given 75 additional staff to help clear backlogs, at a cost of $63.4 million.

He said legislation to establish the body would be introduced next year, though likely not until the second half of the year.

BACKGROUND

ABC News, 7 November 2022:

Administrative Appeals Tribunal reveals 17 members have faced bullying or harassment complaints since 2016

Seventeen current members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) have had more than one bullying, harassment or discrimination complaint made against them since 2016.

Allegations have been made against 19 members in total, with two members no longer working with the AAT.

They include senior officials and a deputy president, with the head of the tribunal unaware until Monday that they were still serving despite the multiple complaints.

The Klaxon, 3 September 2022:

AAT member paid for two gov’t jobs – for over five years

The top public official responsible for penalising medical practitioners who rip-off Medicare was paid for two Federal Government jobs for her entire five-and-a-half-year tenure.

The Klaxon can exclusively reveal Professor Julie Quinlivan, the long-time head of the Federal Government’s Professional Services Review agency, was also paid as a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Quinlivan has been employed as a “part-time member” of the Federal Government’s Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) – in a position paying tens of thousands of dollars a year – since July 2015.

She was also employed as the full-time “director” of the Professional Services Review (PSR) agency from February 2017 until six weeks ago, when she quietly departed, seven months before her contract was due to expire.

The director of the PSR is responsible for reviewing allegations of “inappropriate practice” against Medicare by medical practitioners – including double-billing – and is paid almost $400,000 a year.

The payments to Quinlivan while she held both the AAT and PSR positions totalled over $2 million.

ABC NEWS, 14 April 2022; 

Government unnecessarily extends jobs ahead of election

Plum jobs worth up to $500,000 a year were extended to Liberal Party-linked individuals by the Morrison government in the lead-up to the election, and many were not due to end for another two years. Some had their tenure extended by Morrison & Co to 2027.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 February 2019:

Morrison government moves to re-appoint Abbott-era AAT members

The Morrison government is moving to re-appoint dozens of Abbott-era Administrative Appeals Tribunal members despite their terms coming to an end six weeks after a May federal election.

Crikey, 27 November 2019:

AAT accused of ‘intimidating’ robo-debt victims out of appealing

In the last financial year, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal contacted almost 800 people who wanted to appeal their Centrelink debt. Around half of those contacted withdrew their appeal, a figure that has alarmed experts.

Crikey, 25 September 2019:

Members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal are steadily losing their jobs and being replaced with people less qualified.

Terry Carney lost his job as a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) via a short, blunt email. It arrived five months after he delivered a tribunal decision which declared Centrelink’s robo-debt scheme to be illegal — a finding that angered the federal government.