Teresa Gambaro (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Hansard source

I have great pleasure in summing up for the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship this evening. In doing so, I want to thank the member for Watson and the member for Canning for their contributions to the second reading debate on the Migration Amendment (Statutory Agency) Bill 2007. I agree that it is not a terribly contentious or exciting bill but, nevertheless, it is a very important one. The bill implements the last of a number of minor changes to the governance arrangements for the Migration Review Tribunal and the Refugee Review Tribunal in accordance with the recommendations in the Uhrig report of 2003. It also gives effect to the administrative arrangements for the tribunals which have been in place for a very long time. I stress that this measure does not in any way affect the employment conditions or the entitlements of the Australian Public Service staff working in the tribunals. Employment responsibility for Australian Public Service staff of the tribunals is simply being transferred from the secretary of the department to the principal member of the Refugee Review Tribunal. The bill will not change the functions of the two tribunals under the Migration Act. As previous members have stated, the Migration Review Tribunal and the Refugee Review Tribunal will continue to operate as separate tribunals, but for practical and efficiency purposes they will continue to share common supporting resources.

A number of issues were raised in the debate by the member for Watson, one of which is that it has taken a very long time for the implementations to come into effect. That is true; there has been a long process, but I just want to take the House through some of the chronological steps and perhaps the House can see why it has taken such a while. It has been a very intensive consultative process.

On 27 June 2003 there was the release of the Review of the corporate governance of the statutory authority and office holders, the Uhrig review. On 12 August 2004 the Minister for Finance and Administration announced the government’s response to the Uhrig review, and the response generally endorsed the governance principles and the templates developed in the report. It also announced that the minister would assess statutory authorities and other bodies with their respective portfolio and identify improvements to be made against the recommended governance principles and templates. In August 2005 we had extensive consultation with portfolio bodies and DIAC completed an assessment report of the governance arrangements of the MRT and RRT against the recommended governance principles and templates. The report recommended that some amendments needed to be made.

Amendments needed to be made to the Migration Act of 1958 to provide for the purposes of the Public Service Act 1999 that the principal member and the Australian Public Service employees assisting the principal member together constitute a statutory authority and the principal member is the head of that agency. Then of course we had to make amendments to the Financial Management and Accountability Regulations of 1997 to establish a single prescribed agency in respect of the MRT and the RRT instead of having these two separate prescribed bodies and agencies. So the statement of expectation was drafted under the minister’s signature. It was mindful at all times to make sure that we kept the tribunal’s independence as an administrative review body and the tribunals were requested to respond with a statement of intent, which included some of the important aspects of key performance indicators agreed with the department. Also then we needed to have a statement of expectations and a statement of intent released. On 3 March 2006 the then minister for DIMIA, as it was known, issued a statement of expectations. On 11 April 2006 the tribunal responded with a statement of intent and on 1 July 2006 the recommended amendment to the Financial Management and Accountability Regulations of 1997 came into force.

And here we are tonight, because on 24 May 2007 we introduced the Migration Amendment (Statutory Agency) Bill 2007. It has not been a short path but it is one that has got us to where we are this evening debating this legislation. The department has worked consistently to try and develop these templates and principles developed in the Uhrig report and since we announced those endorsements—which actually occurred in 2004—the minister’s predecessor at the time, Amanda Vanstone, issued a statement of expectations for the tribunals and they responded again with a statement of intent. The most important thing is that these tribunals have been made a single prescribed agency for the purpose of the Financial Management and Accountability Act. This bill tonight implements the final change in relation to those tribunals, and all the other recommendations in relation to the tribunals have been implemented.

Merging the tribunals would move beyond the scope of the recommendations and it would also involve an extensive restructuring of the Migration Act, and that is one of the reasons why the tribunals are not being merged. Previous speakers spoke about that tonight. If there is a strong business case for merging the tribunals into one tribunal that will need to be looked at in the future and any proposal regarding merging the tribunals would of course require wide consultation and would have to be managed so as not to disadvantage the merit review applicants. I support the bill tonight and I am very pleased to be speaking on behalf of the minister to the Migration Amendment (Statutory Agency) Bill 2007.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

See this speech in context