Administrative and Judicial Review Legislation Amendment Bill 2026

Mr NEUMANN (Blair) (18:53): I'm pleased to speak on the Administrative and Judicial Review Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. At the outset, I want to say that, as a Labor government, we are committed to the rule of law, to enabling impartial justice and to promoting public trust in law and in decisions made by judges. It's fundamental to a liberal democracy.

As I was preparing for this speech, I was reminded of that biblical story in the Book of Exodus about Moses. As the population of the children of Israel grew, he was settling disputes from morning till dark. His father-in-law, Jethro, came and saw him, according to the writer, and said, 'How about you appoint some judges?

How about you appoint some delegates, some leaders over the thousands and hundreds and tens and fifties et cetera? Because you can't do it all yourself.' That hierarchy of judicial personnel and administrative personnel is in the Judeo-Christian legal systems that we've inherited in the common law from Britain onwards, so it's almost a biblical thing. I was really reminded about that as I was looking at this piece of legislation.

We need to appoint capable, trustworthy people. That's what Jethro said to Moses. And you know what?

We need to do it as well. Our legal system needs to be trustworthy. If people are in a position where they do not trust the judgements of judicial officers or administrative officers, there's a problem.

The ART, the Administrative Review Tribunal, has responsibility for hundreds of pieces of legislation. People can make application to the ART if they feel that they've been dealt with arbitrarily or capriciously by some administrative decision of government. I want to say to the member opposite, the member for Fisher, that the great irony of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, which we abolished back in 2024, was that, in friendly media outlets, Liberal and National Party ministers for home affairs, immigration and judicial matters would criticise the Administrative Appeals Tribunal regularly, yet it was a sort of legislative or administrative retirement home for Liberal and National Party failed candidates.

It was just astonishing how they would do it. They were the very people who would make decisions they would criticise. If you lost a state seat in Queensland as a Liberal candidate, there's a good chance you were appointed to the AAT.

It was amazing. It was stacked. But let me tell the member for Fisher that it was no utopian legal process.

Even they knew it. They knew it. It was a friendly process.

It was a lot less legal than the sort of cases I dealt with as a lawyer—cases from the Magistrates Court to the High Court of Australia. It was nothing like the High Court or the Supreme Court of Queensland or the full court of the Family Court. It was nothing like that.

But it was certainly a process that deserved respect, and it was important that it have the confidence of the Australian public, and we had no confidence in it. It was totally bastardised—if I can put it like that—by the previous government. They really, really did a bad job.

So I commend the member for Isaacs, the former attorney-general, for the work he did. We were determined to restore integrity and public confidence in our merits based review system, and the establishment of the Administrative Review Tribunal was critical in that regard. But we've seen some challenges since October 2024.

If you look at the figures, the number of lodgements has more than doubled and the time for finalisation of appeals has more than doubled in the last five years. So there's been a challenge. Those figures go back, of course, to the AAT days.

As at 31 May 2026, only 43 per cent of applications were finalised within 12 months—which is the gold standard, I might add, for what should happen. We've got a 79 per cent increase in the number of migration applications finalised in 2024-25 compared to the previous year. That's really an astonishing increase in the number of migration cases.

And, really, it's that area in particular that vexes us and causes us to try and clean up this mess. We've been working hard to clean it up, and I have confidence in the ART. Think about the whole range of areas that the ART deals with, including social security, veterans' entitlements, aged care and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

I don't always agree with the member for Fisher, but I've got to say that, in my experience, the NDIS doesn't always do a particularly good job in making decisions. The number of times—in my observation—that decisions are overturned at the ART level really bears out, I think, some examination of decision-making in the NDIS. The bill has been informed by the operational experience in the last few years.

There's no doubt about that. The changes we're making principally relate to the migration case load, because that's the area, as I've said in numerous speeches over the years on this area of administrative law, which has caused us the most vexations—problems. It's the tribunal's largest on-case case load, and greater efficiencies could be achieved, I think, by doing a number of things.

I accept the government's reasoning in terms of oral reasons in matters. It's crucial. It's absolutely vital in those circumstances.

It's not unusual for judicial officers or administrative officers to make extemporaneous judgements or decisions. It's not an unusual area of practising law. On my observation as a former litigation lawyer—I spent nearly a quarter of a century practising as a lawyer, as an accredited specialist in family law.

And I know many, many times judges or judicial registrars may make decisions orally. This is not an unusual procedure. Don't let anyone think that this straightforward change, which really is appropriately balanced, is disagreeing with the integrity of the system.

It's not in any way at all. If you are unhappy with that decision, you have the capacity to seek the written reasoning of that particular officer. Written reasons can be asked for.

You can appeal, if you wish, to the court. If an application review of a reviewable migration decision or a reviewable protection decision is required, it can be made in an appropriate, approved form. The bill does have some flexibility for a salaried member of the tribunal to become a sessional member or vice versa.

There's an authorisation for registrars to exercise additional powers, and we've seen this over the years. My observation practising as a lawyer was that registrars had more and more power over the years. More and more delegation was done.

This is not unusual, what we're suggesting here. I want the public who may be listening to this or may read it afterwards—not that it's a bestseller, what I have to say. But, truly, it is important that people understand that delegation of powers to registrars is not unusual in our legal system.

It allows any member to correct an obvious error in a decision or a statement of reasons for a decision made by a registrar. The bill contains some technical amendments in relation to clarification. The President of Tribunal is assigned in every jurisdiction.

The identification verification is important. As part of our broad commitment to ensuring the integrity of the migration system, we've got a new power we're introducing to require verification of identity of applicants seeking review of certain protection and other migration decisions. It's crucial.

Fraud and criminality must be stamped out. We've got to make sure that the people who make the applications are actually the correct people. This is consistent with both the ART and the Federal Court.

It's important because we accept that in the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia as well, which I'll refer to as 'the court'. The specific visa classes and particulars of how and when the verification takes place will be set out in regulations. The bill canvasses options for both in-person and virtual verification and allows for classes of persons or classes of applications to be exempt from the process through regulation.

That's not unusual either. The intent of these changes is to ensure applicants actively engage with the systems of merits and judicial review in early stages of a proceeding so there's integrity in the system in terms of who the person fighting the case is. The reform builds on our track record in terms of efficiencies of merit review, including the passage of reforms earlier this year which allowed review of prescribed migration matters to occur in the papers, and I've spoken about that numerous times—that is, without an oral hearing.

That's not unusual. It's very common in our administrative and judicial processes for matters to be dealt with on the papers. It's very common at an interim hearing in the kind of court we're talking about here, for example, for matters to be dealt with on the papers and maybe some words from the bar table or something like that.

It's not unusual for some oral submissions to be made while matters are dealt with on the papers. These reforms also address a cohort of applicants where applications are made on their behalf without express knowledge or consent, and that's crucial in terms of the integrity of the whole process. It will operate differently between the court and the tribunal.

At first, any applicant who is subject to identity verification requirements and fails to satisfy the identity verification process will have their application review mandatorily dismissed, and there may be circumstances when someone is just unable to complete the verification process for any good reason. In those circumstances, all applicants who've had their matters mandatorily dismissed can seek reinstatement.

I think that's a fair system. Under the existing processes set out in the Migration Act, they can make their case as to why they're unable to complete the verification. That's an opportunity for there to be integrity in the process.

The member hearing the reinstatement could then make decisions about whether or not to make further orders requiring the applicant to reattempt the identity-verification process. I hope they make it on the identity verification. I hope they do.

I want the people who make applications to be the very people who've been aggrieved by the decision under the Migration Act. In addition, any applicant who is subject to an identity-verification requirement and fails to satisfy the identity-verification process would require leave of the court to continue the proceedings under the tribunal. Division 2 of the court would be able to extend the period in which the requirement must be satisfied or dispense with the requirement entirely.

Division 2 may, rather than must, dismiss proceedings if an applicant has failed to comply with the requirements if the court has not ordered that the requirement be dispensed with and leave has not been granted to continue the proceedings. An applicant can subsequently seek leave of Division 2 to reinstate proceedings which have been dismissed for failure to satisfy the requirements, and these are critical.

The reality is that the government, as I said before, inherited an absolutely disgraceful mess from those opposite when it came to both the student visa program and the AAT. We've been doing our best to clean that up. In recent years we've tried to rectify this by putting international student numbers on a more sustainable path and reducing the number of student visas issued.

I want to make it clear. International education is an incredibly important export industry for Australia, including in my electorate of Blair. We've got two University of Southern Queensland, or UniSQ, campuses, in Ipswich and Springfield.

Indeed, greater priority is now being given to regional and outer metropolitan universities like UniSQ and TAFEs. But we need to manage the growth of the sector in a sustainable way, along with our migration program more broadly, and that's exactly what we're doing. In recent years we've cut migration by more than 45 per cent from its post-pandemic peak.

The number of international students—the subject of this bill—will continue to fall as we prioritise the skills we need to care for our sick and elderly and to build homes, despite the opposition opposing our every attempt to put caps on international students. As part of the increase in overall scrutiny of the student visa program, the Department of Home Affairs has been working with the Attorney-General and the ART to reduce the number of student visa refusal appeals, to help manage pressures while maintaining the integrity of the program.

In this way, we're seeking to get better decision-making by the department in the first instance so fewer cases can be appealed and sent back. We're also boosting funding to community legal services to help ensure applicants get good legal advice and apply for the correct visas in the first place, thus making it easier for the tribunal to make decisions more quickly and easily.

Our $3.9 billion National Access to Justice Partnership announced last year was the biggest-ever Commonwealth investment in legal assistance and is helping to fund frontline legal services to provide critical assistance and access to justice for vulnerable Australians. In fact, TASC legal and social justice services in Ipswich in my electorate have received money under that agreement.

I know they do a lot of really valuable advocacy work for some of the most vulnerable people in our community, including victims of domestic and family violence, and NDIS clients. I want to thank the government for this particular piece of legislation. I think it's absolutely necessary, and it's got integrity.

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