At the beginning of this week, the Morrison government, through Attorney-General Michaelia Cash, did something absolutely shocking and entirely predictable at the same time.
It announced that another batch of Liberal Party friends, flunkies and failed candidates would be given very highly paid jobs for up to seven years as members of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), the quasi-judicial review body.
It’s almost impossible to be sacked from the AAT. The appointments are made without an open interview process and are entirely at the discretion of the government.
The arrangement is utterly corrupt. It couldn’t be more brazen. There was a time when the government would put out news of AAT appointments late on a Friday. Now it is so confident it will get away with it that it no longer bothers even trying to hide it.
Now, as the Morrison government faces its possible end, the story of what has been done to the AAT from the time of Tony Abbott in 2013 stands as a powerful symbol of the government’s destructive force when it comes to the public interest. It is also a sobering tale of the media’s failure to recognise the gravity of what has unfolded and to ring the alarm loud and clear as pillars of democracy come under attack. The media will need to have its own reckoning at some point to come to grips with its role in normalising corruption. More on that later.
The most brazen act yet
As Crikey reported on Monday, several of the Morrison government’s friends were just appointed to plum AAT jobs. For some it was the first time. Others were already there and were given a promotion or an extension of their tenure.
The appointment of Pru Goward, a former NSW government minister and biographer of John Howard, attracted attention because of a certain upstairs-downstairs view of life that she displayed in a notorious column she wrote for the Australian Financial Review. Goward’s annual salary as a senior member of the tribunal is up to $391,940 per annum.
The appointment of Ann Duffield stands out, mainly because of the ability she has shown to slide effortlessly between roles as a political chief of staff (to Philip Ruddock and Scott Morrison while they were immigration ministers) to an executive at Canberra lobbyists DPG Advisory Solutions (which is populated by Morrison’s close associates and fellow Liberals David Gazard and Scott Briggs), and now to the AAT as a part-time senior member.
This is nothing against Duffield. Who wouldn’t take this job?
But you really do wonder about the chutzpah of the government. It did the same thing in 2019 when Christian Porter was attorney-general and it looked like the Coalition might lose the coming election. Porter put out the usual statement about all appointments being made on merit. There was an uproar lasting approximately 24 hours and then it was back to normal transmission.
But 2022 is by degrees more brazen because the new batch of political appointments coincides with the publication — three days before — of a weighty Senate committee report into the AAT detailing exactly how corrupted the system of appointments has become. The inquiry was led by ALP Senator Kim Carr, who appears to believe that the independence of the tribunal should be respected and that people should be appointed on merit. How quaint.
Professional bodies such as the Law Council of Australia, the Australian Lawyers Alliance and the NSW Bar Association, as well as legal academics, were largely united on the proposition that the best person should get the job and that they should be found via a transparent appointment process with clear selection criteria (rather then the AG looking after a political friend who might have lost their seat in Parliament).
The Grattan Institute, working partly with figures drawn from Crikey’s investigative series in 2019, came up with some startling numbers.
The institute found that the number of AAT members with political affiliations had increased sharply. In the 12 years before 2015–16, 4% of appointees had political affiliations, compared to 29% in the five years since.
Grattan also built a case study based on emails obtained under freedom of information (FOI) data that show that in 2019 Christian Porter had come up with “several additional appointments” who were not known to the Attorney-General’s Department. The department had been given a list of names that the president of the AAT had recommended as possible members.
Of the 18 additional appointments advanced by Porter and disclosed in the FOI records, 10 (55%) had a direct political affiliation with the Coalition. Three had other connections to the Coalition but did not meet Grattan’s definition of a direct political affiliation.
The Senate committee’s report pointed to other inquiries that had recommended changes to the appointments process. One was a review commissioned by Porter himself and carried out by former High Court justice Ian Callinan QC in 2018. It too recommended making the appointments process transparent.
The majority of senators concluded that the AAT system was so broken that the tribunal in its present form needed to be “disassembled” and rebuilt. (Coalition senators, naturally, dissented.)
This startling recommendation has barely caused a ripple.
Crikey asked Labor’s Mark Dreyfus, attorney-general under the Gillard and Rudd governments, if this meant a new ALP government would disband the AAT and start again, as the party’s own senators recommended. The answer was no… but.
“Since 2013 the Liberals have undermined the Administrative Appeals Tribunal by using it as a Liberal Party employment agency, appointing at least 85 of their mates to very highly paid, secure jobs on the tribunal,” Dreyfus said in a statement to Crikey.
“If we are elected, Labor will need to carefully consider how we undo the damage of the last nine years, as we ensure the AAT once again serves the interests of all Australians, not just the Liberal Party and its mates.”
So where has the media been?
The destruction of the AAT and the escalation of its use as a vehicle for political patronage has profound consequences. Yet it has flown sufficiently under the radar for the government to get away with it.
The media shares the blame for this. Reporters get jaded. Some dismiss the story on the grounds that this is what politicians do. There is the argument that “both sides do it”.
Major news sites reported the latest appointments on Monday and Tuesday this week.
However government strategists know that the main game when it comes to voter perceptions is the nightly television news — a platform ill-suited to covering the complexity and detail of the AAT story.
The story rated only a cursory mention in the ABC’s 7pm bulletins in NSW and Victoria, at the end of a politics package mostly focused on the fallout of Concetta Fierravanti-Wells’ allegations of racist comments by Scott Morrison.
“Meanwhile the Coalition’s clearing the decks, appointing a raft of Liberals to lucrative taxpayer-funded positions in what Labor is already calling a ‘jobs for mates rort’,” the reporter said, casting the scandal as just another political bunfight with no actual mention of the AAT.
For commercial television the story simply fails the “who cares?” test and lacks good pictures — the ultimate sin for television news.
Short of entirely scrapping the AAT and starting again with a new tribunal system, it is difficult to see how a Labor government could undo this damage. Anyone who has ever had the displeasure of trying to argue the case for a vulnerable client deprived of their disability support pension or NDIS benefits will know just how bad these new appointments will possibly be. I say ‘possibly’ because sometimes members who are affiliated with the Liberals show a surprising sympathy for the people appearing in their tribunal.
However a Labor government could vastly cut the number of matters going to the AAT simply by making certain that the legislation in relation to benefits is amended so that it is a lot less onerous for people to obtain benefits and NDIS packages, and providing directions to all decision makers in relation to how these matters are to be decided. They could also vastly increase funding to legal aid and community legal centres for matters from the AAT to be appealed at the Federal Court. This would be an arduous process for the applicant, so legislation should also be amended to allow the applicant the benefits they are seeking while the appeal is being heard.
The manner of the appointments to the AAT, and appointments to the Fair Work Commission of which there are fewer but which have also been very political, are to be decried. However I would point out that there are a lot of privileged decision makers, including all Tribunal members in all jurisdictions, who make decisions that affect the lives of vulnerable people. People who have ensconced themselves in the public service and worked their way up to a job in the six figures, or who have worked in professions which lead to being appointed to a Tribunal, have no idea of how the people they make decisions about live their lives. Often they don’t care. I have found this to be true of many, many people no matter what their professed politics. People who are in these positions should have to work for a month every year at the coal face, meeting the people whose lives they affect with their decisions.
Excellent comment. Thanks, VJ.
“Often they don’t care.”
One wonders if their view would change if they fronted up the Tribunal on a matter that was sound/had merit/or whatever the legal term is but it was one that would severely embarrass the Liberal government/opposition?
Of course it wouldn’t. Hundreds and hundreds of decisions are made in Tribunals every day, state and federal, that have the potential to embarrass governments. Those decisions are made at one or two or more remove from the government and they can invariably dodge any responsibility. It’s only when there is a multitude of the same sort of decisions with the same results that people start linking it back to government policy. We’ve seen the result of some of those in the recent excellent articles on Crikey about guardianship and administration and state trustee organisations.
A lot of the decisions made about veterans alone would probably have people fuming if they knew about them. Although I suggest they wouldn’t fume for long. Anyone remember Robodebt? If this government is not only not embarrassed by Robodebt, but continues with a form of it (which they do), then they will never be embarrassed by anything. People won’t vote against this government because of Robodebt, although they might vote for it on the basis that they are tough on ‘bludgers’.
Furthermore, Services Australia is a huge, frightening behemoth. I don’t think people realise what a monster it has become. An incoming government who wanted to lessen its incredible reach into our lives, and its power to harm people, would have to do a lot of work to break it down. I would imagine there would be a lot of resistance from some very well paid bureaucrats who enjoy the power.
I think Oz is in a state of ‘outrage exhaustion’…just in the last few days there’s been the $5.5 bill sub payout news, the 18 mill to a charity that no one wants to say what it’s there for, the Lib candidate from the legal firm investigating the prayer room bizzo….and it’s not like it’s been an unusual few days. This is pretty much par for the course for the entire Scummo reign.
Do people have enough energy left for the AAT appointments? By now, i’m just throwing them in a pile marked “sundries”.
Morrison has achieved an extraordinary feat, he’s emotionally wrecked an entire nation. The mental health of the country will improve immeasurably once he’s gone.
Glenn…Re ‘…the $5.5 bill sub payout news…’ If you want to be totally outraged, read the latest article in Kangaroo Court of Australia on this issue!!
Perhaps David Hardaker might like to have a look as well.
It has been a long game started under Howard following the imported ‘owned’ GOP strategy & tactics via fossil fueled libertarian think tanks; Thomas Franks in the ‘Wrecking Crew’ (2008) explains the modus operandi (from Good Reads):
‘describes the rise of a ruling coalition dedicated to dismantling government. But rather than cutting down the big government they claim to hate, conservatives have simply sold it off, deregulating some industries, defunding others, but always turning public policy into a private-sector bidding war…… It is no coincidence, Frank argues, that the same politicians who guffaw at the idea of effective government have installed a regime in which incompetence is the rule. Nor will the country easily shake off the consequences of deliberate misgovernment through the usual election remedies. Obsessed with achieving a lasting victory, conservatives have taken pains to enshrine the free market as the permanent creed of state’
But it’s not a free market economy. It’s monopoly capitalism (as I recall from some economics book from the 70’s.
Yes exactly. Markets are a dominant mechanism for co-ordinating the economy and transferring value but they exist alongside various other economic mechanisms including state institutions and laws. The “free market” is rarer and is most usually found as an ideological construct defending the rights of private wealth. A government dedicated to keeping markets free by breaking up monopolies and oligopolies would be radical indeed.
Australia is particularly cosy with oligopolies. Helps explain the low growth, low complexity, weakly diversified economy we have. Also supported by 30 plus years of wage suppression and attacks on freedom of association.
Exactly right, and one of the things weaponised so successfully by the post-Reagan right-wing has been the term ‘Freedom’ or ‘Free’.
In terms of the market, the word ‘free’ is a paradox in that, without restrictions (anti-monopoly, anti-trust, insider-trading laws, etc), the market is not free.
And in terms of wider society, the absence of all laws and restrictions condenses ‘freedom’ upwards and confers it upon the most powerful (those who have the power and means to guarantee their freedom at the expense of anybody else).
“Politics As A Rort.”
It never ceases to amaze me, how a mob that has earned so little thinks they’re entitled to so much….. “in-breeding”?
‘On the way out’ they’re trying to pocket as much as they can.
Good article Crikey. It is a profoundly concerning development.
The rorting of the AAT is a blot on the Australian legal system. It might gain more traction as an issue if more people knew more about what it’s members decide. Matters it deals with include reviews and appeals related to Centrelink, Veterans, small business taxation, taxation generally, refugees and migrants, child support, NDIS and freedom of information.
What does it do for justice and the legitimacy of Australia’s system of government if the AAT is stacked with government favourites being “rewarded” with high paying tax payer funded positions, subject to little supervision of how hard they work? Even worse, what is the effect on public confidence when some of those appointees have well known ideological biases in relation to matters that will come before them?
This shameless rorting is yet another example of the fact that there is nothing liberal (democratic) about this government. Indeed, it would comfortably fit into the norms of Russian (lack of) governance. They constantly trash liberal values and norms and rely on the spread of, “meh they all do it”, memes to cover themselves. Something that undermines our system of government and its legitimacy, encouraging a passive and cynical citizenry.
It’s classic modus operandi of supposedly ethical and competent ‘conservative’ government on behalf of supporters crossing white Christian nationalist libertarian ideology and autocracy; imported from the US GP observed in Russia, Turkey, Hungary etc. with an eye on permanent political influence e.g. via obstruction, even if out of power….