Policy Submission: House of Representatives Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs on the Administrative Review Tribunal Bill 2023

Introduction

Particularly in the last decade, for Australians living with disability, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) was the final source of hope: that NDIS access could still be granted, or cuts to plans could be reversed; that Disability Support Pension (DSP) tables of impairment could be deemed met; or that Centrelink debts could be recalculated or deemed not to be owed. Decisions pivotal to the fulfillment of basic needs: food on the table, money for rent, access to life changing services and supports.  While, notionally, administrative appeal rights are not exhausted until the Federal Court delivers a verdict, the cost, complexity and stress of this avenue was often prohibitive.  

Under the previous AAT regime, people living with disability were up against government bureaucrats and their well-equipped counsel. Further, Tribunal Members, appointed without merit-based selection processes, demonstrated a concerning lack of knowledge regarding contemporary principles, philosophies and conceptions of disability and best-practice understandings of trauma-informed conduct.    

Thankfully, this Bill will overhaul the nation's administrative review system, encompassing the dissolution of the AAT and the establishment of a new federal administrative review entity, the Administrative Review Tribunal (the Tribunal/ART). This initiative, by incorporating the implementation of a transparent, merit-based system for the appointment of tribunal members who will be responsible for the scrutiny of administrative decisions, does address some shortcomings of the previous system.  

While we understand that the Bill was drafted following consultation with the community more broadly, and the disability community specifically, there remains scope to further strengthen the proposed legislation, particularly given the release of the Final Report of the Disability Royal Commission last year. By expanding the principles embedded in the Bill beyond mere accessibility, by: 

• integrating the principles of co-design whenever training and education is contemplated; 

• ensuring that lived-experience appointments to the Tribunal are targeted, not aspirational; 

• ensuring that information communicated is accessible to all who receive it; and  

• ensuring that decision-making ability is supported, not substituted 

this Bill can increase the chances that the new tribunal will make “correct and preferable” decisions when reviewing matters where people living with disability are parties, and that all parties leave the process not necessarily happy with the outcome, but with faith in and understanding of the process.