Remind me again, who was it that stacked the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) with its political mates, cronies, hacks, former staffers, failed candidates and those generally needing somewhere to go after being voted out of government?
Today, incomprehensibly, Australia’s national daily failed to nail the Coalition government as being responsible for what is very likely the most egregious and audacious stacking ever of an independent government body.
The Australian has found a sudden concern for the integrity of the AAT, given it is set to have the power to sign off on warrants for anti-corruption investigators to tap the phones of pretty well any current or former public official up to and including the prime minister. The powers are found in proposed legislation for the government’s new national anti-corruption commission.
The Oz came close to naming those responsible for the stacking of the AAT but didn’t quite manage to get there. The AAT was “politically stacked”. It had happened “in the past three years”. Alas, there was no naming and shaming. (We don’t know where this omission happened in the editorial process.)
Perhaps Crikey can help, given our work over the years in exposing the depth of the former Coalition government’s traducing of the AAT’s independence.
The trashing of the AAT began in the first years of the Abbott government when it abolished the independent body that kept watch on the AAT’s performance. Next it ceased to use an open and transparent process to appoint (and reappoint) AAT members.
Finally, under the Morrison government it abandoned all pretence and went on a spree of appointing and reappointing political mates to long terms as members, with salaries reaching $300,000 a year and more.
The Grattan Institute this year reported that a “staggering” 20% of the AAT’s 320 tribunal members had political links. It found that political appointments to the AAT had grown “substantially” in the past five years with many of these appointments “made in the lead-up to the 2019 and 2022 federal elections”, referring to appointments made by former attorneys-general Christian Porter and Michaelia Cash, as a feared election rout loomed.
Adding to the outright weirdness, The Australian quoted senior Liberals casting doubt on the very body it stacked while in government. Two senior Liberals, James Paterson and Andrew Hastie, said issuing a warrant was too serious a job to done by a member of the AAT. A third, Keith Wolahan, called for warrants to be signed off by a superior court judge.
Three senior Liberals casting doubt on the AAT’s capability? This has to be just the kind of ammunition Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus needs to make a move on the body. ALP members have previously agitated for the AAT to be abolished and for a new organisation to be built in its ashes.
So what does the attorney-general say now?
“The attorney-general is carefully considering how we undo the damage of the last nine years, and ensure the AAT once again serves the interests of all Australians, not just the Liberal Party and its mates,” a spokesperson told Crikey.
“He will have more to say about this soon.”
