Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

You are right, Senator Scarr. It will not be the last time. As I said, we'll support this, but that's because we are here today to help the Labor Party—to help the government—clean up what I said was a complete policy wrecking exercise by former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus. In fact, that would be a nice little banner: 'Former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus. ART. One billion dollars. Complete policy wrecking exercise.'

What actually happened in context of this bill was, if you recall, for purely political reasons, the former attorney-general tore down the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and replaced it—and we'll get to the cost shortly—at great cost to the Australian taxpayer: $1 billion. One billion dollars to tear down what was known as the AAT and replace it with the ART. All Australians need to understand this: it cost you $1 billion—$1 billion!—that could have been spent elsewhere, on actually assisting you, to change the name of the body from the AAT to the ART.

What's also happened is—we didn't support this legislation—the changes that the Labor government put forward have meant Australians have paid the price in blowouts, backlogs and dysfunction. I can't wait to hear the government senator try to explain away what this bill is, seriously. These talking points are really going to be talking points for the moment. Let us be very clear. This is a clean-up bill. One might even say it is a legislative mop and bucket. What the Australian Labor Party had sold the Australian people as a new era of integrity and efficiency in administrative review has, in practice—we will go through the figures shortly—delivered delay, backlog, confusion and dysfunction. As I said, we're back here again. I'm with Senator Scarr—I don't think it's going to be the last time that we are forced back into the parliament to fix the consequences of a 'design fail' bill.

Let's have a look at what Labor promised. They promised Australians that the new tribunal would restore trust, speed up outcomes and raise standards. I have to say, if I heard that, at first blush, I'd probably say, 'That sounds pretty good.' The bad news for Australians is this: you don't live in press releases. You live in the real world. The impact on the real world is this, where a decision is delayed for months, and months, and months. That is not integrity. It is a system failing the people who are subject to it. That failure is not theoretical. Outcomes matter more than slogans. The slogans sounded great at the time, but the reality is this. The test of a tribunal is simple: How long does it take to get a decision? Is the process predictable and accessible? And does it support program integrity, particularly when we're talking about migration cases? Or—and this is where we're at—does it become a bottleneck that invites delay and exploitation?

On each of those tests, Labor's model—$1 billion, which changed an A to an R—they are actually failing. This is the reality. These are the numbers. They are damning. The caseload, from the AAT to the $1 billion ART, was 67,000 matters in May 2022, when we left office. For a billion dollars of taxpayers' money, former attorney-general Mark Dreyfus has now increased that caseload—it is quite spectacular—by almost 50 per cent to 111,000, Senator Scarr.