Top legal minds and disability and Indigenous advocates have been appointed to a reinstated administrative decisions watchdog to bolster oversight and tackle systemic issues.
The experts arrive as part of the Albanese government’s response to Robodebt and will provide oversight of decisions made under a complex and at times incohesive legislative landscape.
It comes as fresh concerns are raised about automated decision-making.
Attorney General Mark Dreyfus on Friday announced the Administrative Review Council (ARC) he pledged to revive last year will be chaired by Margaret Allars SC, a senior counsel and academic with 35 years’ experience in administrative law.
From next week, she will chair the revived council that had been disbanded by the Abbott government almost a decade ago, and which the Robodebt Royal Commission found would have been useful in exposing the illegal scheme earlier.
Professor Allars will be joined by Deakin University Distinguished Professor Matthew Groves, disability advocate and policy expert Dr Graeme Innes and First Nations Advocates Against Family Violence CEO Mrs Kerry Staines.
They will work with the heads of existing government regulators and appeal bodies at the ARC.
The body had operated from 1977 with bipartisan support as a ‘watchdog for the citizen’ to ensure Australia’s system of administrative review was effective.
It was the only entity that advised the Attorney General on the operation and integrity of the administrative law system as a whole and also provided training to other agencies.
It was abolished by the Abbott government in its ‘smaller government’ reform agenda in the 2015-16 Budget — the same Budget that brought Robodebt into being.
A royal commission into the illegal scheme found it would have been within the ARC’s remit and its existence “could have played an important role in exposing the deficiencies of the scheme”.
Commissioner Catherine Holmes was highly critical of how the then Department of Human Services handled Robodebt appeals to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, including not publishing decisions and failing to properly review them itself as cases mounted.
She found the ARC could have had oversight of the mounting appeals, which overwhelmingly ended with rejections of income averaging because of a lack of legal basis.
Because DHS did not typically appeal these decisions to the next level of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, the finings weren’t made public, obscuring the massive legal doubts about income averaging Robodebt was built on.
But an ARC could have monitored these results and inquired into the “equity and justice of the procedures used by DHS to make debt-raising decisions during Robodebt”, and directly informed the minister, Commissioner Holmes said.
She recommended the ARC be reestablished with its traditional functions and “consideration given to a particular role in review of Commonwealth administrative decision making processes”.
The Albanese government accepted the recommendation and in May passed a bill to re-establish the ARC, which has around $5 million in funding.
The Labor government has also abolished the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, ending the tenure of many of its political appointments, and replaced it with a similar body, the Administrative Review Tribunal.
“The re-establishment of the ARC responds to recommendations of the Robodebt Royal Commission,” Mr Dreyfus said in a statement.
“Together with the new, fit-for-purpose Administrative Review Tribunal, the ARC will be tasked with promoting better decision-making across government.”
The new members join on five-year terms. They will work with standing members of the ARC, the President of the Administrative Review Tribunal, the Hon Justice Emilios Kyrou, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Mr Iain Anderson, and the Australian Information Commissioner, Ms Elizabeth Tydd.
The Attorney-General’s Department is also currently consulting on proposed safeguards for automated-decision making systems used in welfare, migration and other federal governments decisions.
There are currently serious concerns about how social security payments have been cancelled for jobseekers and how debts have been calculated over two decades.
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