Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration, Integration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are moments in this parliament when we deal with legislation of great moment and have debates that grip the nation. This is not one of those moments. The Migration Amendment (Statutory Agency) Bill 2007 contains but one clause on a simple administrative matter. It is an important clause but it has taken the government some years to bother to draft it. The bill simply formalises the existing administrative arrangements between the two main merit review tribunals for immigration cases—that is, the Migration Review Tribunal and the Refugee Review Tribunal. The one clause in the bill amends the Migration Act to provide that the principal member of the Refugee Review Tribunal together with the registrars, deputy registrars and other officers of the MRT and the RRT who are employed under the Public Service Act will become a statutory agency for the purpose of the Public Service Act 1999. The bill makes the principal member of the Refugee Review Tribunal the head of this statutory agency.

For quite some time the two tribunals have been gradually amalgamating their administrative arrangements in order to save money and improve efficiency. The tribunals used to operate as two quite separate and independent tribunals, but increasingly they have been integrating into a single unit. The tribunals’ offices have already co-located in both Sydney and Melbourne. They share common registries and common administrative facilities, and members and staff have for some time been cross-appointed to both tribunals. The two tribunals are also prescribed as a single financial entity for the purposes of the Financial Management and Accountability Act 1997. There is a single payroll and set of financial statements. The tribunals have also combined their case management systems. This bill formalises the existing arrangements and makes clear the legal basis on which those tribunals have been operating as a single statutory agency.

One of the main legal effects of the bill is that the principal member of the RRT will have the legal authority as the agency head to employ staff and exercise Australian Public Service powers. At the moment the principal member acts on the delegated authority of Mr Andrew Metcalfe, the Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, in order to make those decisions. This bill will not change the actual work in practice but will shift the legal basis for those operations.

The impetus for this change—when I say ‘impetus’, it sounds like something that provides a big push and a rapid movement, although it was not—comes from some time ago, following the Review of corporate governance of statutory authorities and officeholders known as the Uhrig review. The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship acknowledged this in his second reading speech when he said:

The … bill …will implement the last of a range of minor changes to the legislative framework of the Migration Review Tribunal and the Refugee Review Tribunal recommended in the Uhrig report …

This report was actually handed down in 2003 and, as we have plenty of time, because there is not a lot to talk about in the bill, we will take a moment to look at the chronology of how we actually got here.

This bill comes from a promise back in October 2001, at the height of the election campaign, that the government would review statutory authorities because we were in a climate, as we remember, shaped by the collapse of both HIH and OneTel. The public rightly perceived that there was a lack of accountability mechanisms. In particular, there was concern at the time over the monitoring provided by the ACCC. In 2001, the promise was made of a review. In 2002, the Prime Minister finally bothered to commission former Rio Tinto and Westpac chairman John Uhrig AO to review the corporate governance of statutory authorities. His report was presented to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Finance and Administration in the following year, 2003. It then took until 2004, having been received in 2003, conducted in 2002 and promised in 2001, before the government decided to publicly release the report. The government truly was taking one step at a time—one year per step.

At the time of the release of the review, the Minister for Finance and Administration, Senator Minchin, stated that all government agencies would be assessed against the templates of the review and those assessments would all be complete by March 2006. So that was another 18 months to figure things out. In an article by Lenore Taylor in the Financial Review on 12 August 2004, the minister acknowledged:

“In our last term, there were some events to cause the business community considerable anxiety, mostly centred around the ACCC, and a general sense that the ACCC and a few others had become laws unto themselves, and the ATO was being seen as not properly accountable to the government and the parliament …

The quotation continues:

“While the heat has gone out of some of those issues now … we think Uhrig has proposed a good and necessary strategy to ensure accountability in structures that have really built up in an ad hoc manner over the years …”

Waiting for the heat to go out of the issue from 2001, we are then told that the heat has gone out in 2004. We then wait until it gets really cold in 2006 for the last progress report and we are now here in 2007 finally dealing with a one-clause amendment to legislation that came out of a review promised in the election campaign of 2001. Why have we actually even got here now? There was speculation in the Financial Review in an article by Verona Burgess on 18 May 2007. It was a very brief article but obviously there was not a tremendous amount to report on. It says:

We understand the government intends to issue an overview of the whole thing in the near future, and not before time.

Once the government decided to do an overview of the progress, they realised that progress has been conducted pretty much at a snail’s pace on something that was always going to have bipartisan support. It was never difficult; it simply took time for the government to get around to it. We have the response now and we have legislation which puts in place what is simply prudent policy recommended a very long time ago.

To bring the two agencies under one head as a single statutory agency is sensible. It allows a more logical principle than to have everything operating under delegated authority, which is the way it has been happening so far. The opposition are pleased to have an opportunity to speak to legislation that we certainly hoped we would have been speaking to many years ago. But, notwithstanding that, we are here now. It is hardly controversial, it is sensible public policy, the opposition are very pleased to be finally speaking on the legislation and we certainly hope we vote on it this year—that it is this year when the Senate votes on it and this year when it is proclaimed as legislation.

Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I concur with the member for Watson that the Migration Amendment (Statutory Agency) Bill 2007 is a very simple one-item bill which is very simply dealt with. The member has made a succinct summary of the bill. His statement to this House has covered pretty much all of the items that need to be covered in respect of this bill. I am pleased to see that it has bipartisan support and it should go through the House as soon as possible. In relation to the member for Watson’s issue about when the bill will eventually get through the parliament, I understand the government has decided to have it implemented by 1 July 2007. If he were here, he would know that I believe that is the intention of the government.

I will just briefly mention a few of the issues that have been raised or add to them. This bill provides for the last remaining recommendation of the Uhrig inquiry relating to the MRT and the RRT. Essentially the Migration Amendment (Statutory Agency) Bill, which we are debating today, inserts a new section in the Migration Act 1958 which will establish a single statutory agency for the purposes of the Public Service Act 1999. The proposed agency will consist of a principal member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, RRT, and the registrars, deputy registrars and other officers of both the RRT and the Migration Review Tribunal, MRT, engaged under the Public Service Act. The major change effected by the bill is that under the current statutory arrangements the Australian Public Service employees working at the tribunal are legally employed by the Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, and if the bill is passed—and we know it will be, because the opposition have said that they will support us—the APS staff will instead be employed by the principal member of the RRT. The minister stated in his second reading speech that, for practical purposes, tribunal staff will be directed by the principal member, who is the executive officer of both the tribunals, under powers delegated by the secretary. It is a sensible amalgamation because this arrangement has been in place for some time and it will give legal effect to arrangements that have been just a loose agreement until this time. We know that since 2001 both the MRT and the RRT have been working closely together both from co-location and from administrative efficiencies using the same members, resources, structures, operations and procedures. In particular, the principal member of the MRT and the RRT is, as I said, the same person, as is the registrar. The bill will not change the functions of either tribunal but will simply clarify the employment arrangements of the Australian Public Service staff working at both tribunals.

To clarify for the House: the RRT is the body that reviews decisions made by DIAC to refuse or cancel protection visas to noncitizens in Australia. The tribunal also has the power, in respect of certain transitory persons, to conduct an assessment of whether a person is covered by the definition of a refugee in article 1A of the 1951 refugee convention. The RRT was established in 1993. The MRT provides a final independent merits review of visas and visa related decisions made by the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship or, more typically, by officers of DIAC acting as delegates of the minister. The MRT has been operating since 1 June 1999. Decisions to deport a person, decisions refusing or cancelling visas on character grounds under section 501 et cetera are reviewable by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. I think most people would know that Mr Steve Karas AO is the principal member of both tribunals. He was first appointed to this position in July 2001 and his current appointment is until 30 June 2007.

I will just briefly raise a couple of issues because we are all on the same page on this. One is that, because the functioning tribunals are co-located, I have found it unsatisfactory that when I have had to make representation on behalf of some people from Western Australia there is no permanent officer located in Perth. I believe there is only one part-time officer there. When people have had to have reviews they have had to do it by teleconference, which is highly unsatisfactory given language barriers et cetera even though there might be interpreters. Also, there was a case I am aware of when one of the review officers—and I will mention his name—a Mr Thomas, was arrogant and gave very little decent support to the person for whom I had written a letter of support. So I am not necessarily happy with all the functions of the tribunal and the way they act. Obviously they are a law unto themselves, but when they receive representations from people such as me and my colleagues I think the representations are dismissed almost out of hand. So I am unhappy from that point of view. As the Chair of the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Migration, I have had a lot of issues involving both the MRT and the RRT. I would like to have a better response when I deal with these bodies because in the past it has not always been satisfactory, from my point of view. Be that as it may, this is a sensible instrument in this House and, as I have said and the member for Watson has said, it is supported and should pass by July this year.

Teresa Gambaro (Petrie, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to 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.