Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Administrative and Judicial Review Legislation Amendment Bill 2026 and, in doing so, acknowledge the member for Blair's long service in such legal matters. I acknowledge too that he played a part in a joint select committee about the efficacy of visas, migration and other matters as well, with the member for La Trobe. I also respect the member for La Trobe's work with the Victorian police and his advocacy of justice and what is right. Certainly, the member for Blair in his contribution talked about reviews of visa matters, the placements and numbers of international students and what the government may or may not have been doing in that regard.

In the minister's second reading speech, he noted that the Administrative Review Tribunal began operations on 14 October 2024. At the time, importantly, it replaced the former Administrative Appeals Tribunal as Australia's primary federal merits review body. Time will tell whether this will enable better jurisdiction of all these types of matters. The minister pointed out:

The ART provides an independent mechanism of review of government decisions made under over 400 Commonwealth acts—a function that is critical to Australia's system of government.

Those were the minister's words not mine.

We face a situation in Australia at the moment where the decisions of ministers, tribunals and courts come under a lot of pressure and stress, particularly when it comes to visa matters. Every member of parliament is often lobbied about the merits or otherwise of particular individuals who seek to come to this country. Coming to Australia is the best ticket in the world. Whilst I appreciate there has to be clarity and transparency around these decisions, around who makes these decisions, around the independence of these decisions, it's not easy for any government, Labor or coalition, to settle upon the best system at the time.

The minister said this:

The government established the ART to ensure that members of the community have an avenue to seek review of government decisions in an effective, efficient and fair way.

The government recognises that not every review is the same and that the ART should provide a meaningful opportunity for review in a way that is appropriate to the circumstances of the case.

The government is therefore committed to ensuring the ART has the tools and the flexibility it needs to deliver these objectives.

Fair enough.

What I worry about though—and I've raised it in this chamber and the House a number of times; you, Deputy Speaker Wilkie, would have heard my concerns about ministers not having the powers that they once had under the Westminster system to make the decisions that were always theirs. At the end of the day, the buck stops with the minister. They are the ones who have their names at the bottom of a bill, of a decision. It's not the bureaucrats or the tribunals or the faceless people appointed to certain positions who will face the media, who will have their name on a ballot paper. It's the minister who the buck stops with, and rightly so. I think that all too often this Labor government is outsourcing its work to judicial review tribunals and the like, and ministers aren't being given the autonomy to make the decisions. They will be the ones called to account if a decision goes pear-shaped.

I know the coalition supports this bill. I appreciate that there has been an amendment put forward by the member for Kooyong. But, as the minister said in the second reading speech:

The bill would also support the ART to manage its significant workload across case types, through measures that would create efficiencies, improve processes and increase flexibility.

All of those are desirable measures. What we are seeing is an increase in complexity of visa cases, visa cases where people want to come to this country, want to work in this country, want to stay in this country, want to become permanent residents of this country. As I stated earlier, citizenship in Australia is the best ticket in the world because this is the best country in the world.

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