Hat’s off to Mark Dreyfus for booting the Coalition’s crony-filled AAT

Mark Woodacre writes: I retired as a member of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) in 2017 after spending more than 10 years deciding appeals against social security and child support decisions according to the law and the merits of each case (“Labor aims to have new AAT up and running by October”). In those days merit was also the basis of selection for membership of the tribunal. 

Before my retirement, I noticed that new appointments seemed to be based more on political affiliation than merit. I also set aside a series of robodebt decisions, since they were clearly not based on the law, and the fact that the government ignored the tribunal’s feedback that the debts were illegal further strengthened my view that the government had abandoned standards of integrity in favour of cronyism and theft from the most disadvantaged in the community. 

Mark Dreyfus is right to abolish the AAT and start again, with the emphasis once again on merit in selection of members and in the appeal decisions.

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John Adams writes: The stacking of the AAT is appalling cronyism by the former government which is being addressed, but not for revenge as suggested by the bleating of Julian Leeser. Listening to him helps to understand how corrupt that Coalition government was and wonder at its attempts to maintain the high ground in this debate. Contemptible.

Chris Lewis writes: Hats off to Mark Dreyfus for stepping up and restructuring the AAT, a very important body that had been shamelessly stripped of its independence and value by the previous government. This tragedy for democracy had to be reversed.

Don Matthews writes: So we have the Liberals stacking to advance Liberal control of decision-making. But Labor on the other hand stacks to advance Labor ideals and take control of decision-making. This is unjust. Only Liberals have pure hearts and are thus the only ones who should rule. Labor will destroy government if it is allowed to stack. 

Roy Ramage writes: No, this is not Labor taking revenge. The appointment of “mates” by the Liberals as they cruised through their time in office was simply not acceptable. With one or two notable exceptions the unqualified grifters simply weakened the organisation.

Any business or body that does not choose its staff via the now well-established process of interview and a background suitable for the job is not going to be in business very long. Likewise a government body. Labor is correct to restructure the AAT in a similar fashion as it has done correcting things such as robodebt and the other travesties knocked up by the Liberals.

Erik Kulakauskas writes: Scrapping the AAT is a welcome move and current members have nothing to complain about as they can reapply and if they are good enough they will be reappointed. I do object to compensation (reputedly $10 million) being paid to those not reappointed. To my mind compensation implies they were worthy members. The government should pass retrospective legislation (John Howard did) to deny any compensation.

While they’re at it, the government — which has been woeful in cleaning out the top echelons of the politicised public service — should rid us of highly paid and useless rubbish, particularly those who simply did not do their jobs. The robodebt scheme is a classic example. Defence would be a good start and I’m certain there’s an abundance of tribunals and statutory authorities in the same position as the AAT. The National Party has some very well-qualified candidates for the boot. In truth, all parties do. Clean them out and start again.

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