Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) | Hansard source

The government affirms the terms of the public interest immunity claim made in respect to the Senate order of 15 June 2023 relating to the resignation of Justice Meagher as the President of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

The government also deeply regrets the grubby attempt by the opposition and the Greens political party to draw a justice of the Federal Court of Australia into a political controversy. It is almost without precedent to use the procedures of the Senate to examine matters concerning a judge in this way. The only precedent that comes to mind is the disgraceful attempt by former Liberal senator Bill Heffernan to use the Senate to besmirch the reputation of a justice of the High Court. Those acts were rogue acts done without the support of the Liberal Party. In contrast, the motions moved by the Liberal Party in relation to Justice Meagher were moved here by the shadow Attorney-General, Senator Cash. Senator Cash demonstrates time and time again that the modern Liberal Party is incapable of viewing any significant matter of public policy through any prism other than the prism of self-interest.

Not so long ago, the AAT commanded universal respect. Its integrity and independence were lauded by politicians of all political persuasions, by members of the community and even by High Court judges—one of whom, the late Sir Gerard Brennan, served as the AAT's inaugural president between 1976 and 1979. In 2006, the former Liberal Attorney-General Philip Ruddock said that the AAT led the world in administrative law innovation and best practice. It is inconceivable that any Commonwealth Attorney-General, Liberal or Labor, could make remotely similar comments now. That, in large part, is because a series of Liberal Attorneys-General broke the AAT. They trashed it. They treated it like a cash cow for their Liberal mates. When Labor was last in government, appointments to the AAT were made in accordance with a publicly accessible merit based selection process. However, after the Liberals came to power in 2013 they dumped the merit based selection process and, over the course of almost a decade, appointed at least 85 former Liberal MPs, failed Liberal candidates, former Liberal staffers and other close Liberal associates without any merit based selection process, including some individuals with no relevant expertise or experience.

Unfortunately, a series of Liberal Attorneys-General, like Senator Cash and Christian Porter, made non-merit-based appointments to the AAT, because for them and their Liberal colleagues the AAT was there to serve the interests of the Liberal Party and its mates, not the Australian community. The former coalition government fatally compromised the AAT, undermined its independence and eroded the quality and efficiency of its decision-making. Senator Cash and her colleagues cared so little about preserving the actual or perceived independence of the AAT that they even appointed active lobbyists as members. Remember, the job of an AAT member is to conduct independent merit reviews of government decisions, yet Senator Cash and her colleagues thought it was appropriate to spend taxpayers' money to appoint Liberal aligned lobbyists as AAT members while those individuals were also being paid by corporate interests to influence government decision-making.

In December last year, the Albanese government announced the abolition of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. That decision was not taken lightly, but it was made necessary because of the actions of the former government and those former Liberal Attorneys-General. Every senator in this place who supported this motion by Senator Cash, including every member of the Greens political party, should hang their heads in shame, because what they did by supporting the motion was to align themselves with Senator Cash and the Liberal Party's campaign to protect the Liberal Party's stack of the AAT. What Senator Cash and her Liberal colleagues did to the AAT was a disgrace. Tens of thousands of the most vulnerable people in Australia rely on the AAT each year to independently review government decisions that have major and sometimes life-altering impacts on their lives—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 essential support.

Not on this matter and not on any matter will be Albanese Government take lectures from the Liberal Party on integrity or transparency—a Liberal Party that, while in government, was led by a prime minister who appointed himself to secret ministries; that contained a cabinet that endorsed, defended and doubled down on the illegal and disgraceful robodebt scheme; that failed to honour a commitment to establish an anticorruption commission; and, of course, that contained ministers whose offices leaked police raids on union premises, jeopardising police investigations. Senator Cash and the Liberal and National parties have no credibility whatsoever on integrity matters, and we won't take lectures from them now.