David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I spoke earlier about the rationale behind this. This is Labor taking failed coalition policy for administrative review designed to punch down on migrants out of the deep freeze, whacking it in the microwave and reheating it. It is bad policy of the then coalition, now Liberal Party, punching down on migrants in the ART and deciding to take away basic rights when it comes to challenging visa refusals and basic procedural fairness. The Administrative Review Tribunal and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 primarily seeks to amend the Administrative Review Tribunal Act to expand the circumstances in which the tribunal can make a decision on migration matters based on the papers without ever hearing from the applicant and without having the benefit of an oral hearing.

Currently, the ART can only review a case on the papers if all parties consent. There may be occasions when all parties consent to something being done on the papers. There may be a clearly defined, narrow case in which you're legally represented and you know you've got a narrow issue—an interpretation issue or a narrow factual issue—that can be decided on the papers. If parties agree, then, by all means, do it. But, overwhelmingly, when it comes to migration matters, people are not represented. Overwhelmingly, there are significant cultural barriers and barriers to understanding how the legal system works. The benefit of an oral hearing, particularly with a translator, can be that people who are unfamiliar with the process and don't have legal assistance can actually get a fair go, because the tribunal has an obligation in an oral hearing to try and understand what the issues are before it, to tease them out with an applicant and to fairly decide the case. But, if you remove oral hearings, you remove that chance for fairness.

This bill seeks to change it so the ART can consider any case on the papers if the tribunal thinks it can be 'adequately determined' on the papers and that 'it is reasonable in the circumstances'. That change is to all migration matters. That will be a significant change to current practice and will negatively impact the most marginalised people, as the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre made clear when they said:

Our view is that oral hearings are … critical to ensure that people seeking asylum receive a fair assessment of their protection claims.

And I endorse what the ASRC say.

But this bill also proposes changes to the Migration Act to require—to force—the tribunal to make certain decisions only on the papers and to not permit an oral hearing. Specifically, it proposes that as a blanket requirement to review classes of migration matters that are going to be set out in the regulations, but we know it's going to start with student visas. I want to stress that it starts with student visas but it can be expanded under the regulations to any other visa class.