The appointment of 14 former Coalition MPs and staffers to the Australian Appeals Tribunal last month is as deeply political as it is concerning. "Jobs for the boys" is hardly a new phenomenon, but it's becoming the rule rather than the exception.
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Much of the reporting on the latest appointments concerns the optics of a senior minister, Attorney-General Christian Porter, handing out jobs to political mates and former colleagues. But within the outrage of yet another furore over politicians behaving badly, we lose sight of what the AAT does and whom it's meant to serve.
During Senate estimates hearings, I ask the AAT how many appeals it receives that relate to Centrelink, categorised by payment type. Last month, the AAT told me there had been a 42 per cent increase overall in Centrelink-related appeals. Appeals related to the disability support pension rose 77 per cent, those related to Newstart allowance increased 41 per cent, and national disability insurance scheme appeals went up 75 per cent.
This alarmed me but was unsurprising, given I've been watching appeals to the AAT since disability-support eligibility criteria were overhauled back in 2012.
In that year, the then Labor government reduced the number of people able to access the support by forcing them to prove they hadn't been able to find work for 18 months.
In 2015, the Abbott government announced it would review disability-support-pension recipients aged under 35 years, and then started on those over 35.
In 2016, it again targeted vulnerable people by announcing 90,000 unnecessary medical reviews of existing pension recipients over three years. It later cancelled the reviews because they failed dismally.
A Parliamentary Budget Office report released in 2018 found that tougher eligibility requirements introduced by the Gillard government, and strengthened under the Coalition, led to a decline in new disability support pension participants, from almost 89,000 in 2009-10 to about 32,000 in 2016-17.
When Porter – who once said the disability pension had "stretched the system to an unsustainable point" – announced a raft of politically affiliated AAT appointments just days later, I was even more alarmed.
It's more than an expectation that individuals appointed to these positions of power operate without prejudice and above politics – it's an obligation. AAT decisions often set legal precedents. If these precedents reflect political ideology, people's lives are the collateral.
Appealing a decision in the AAT is by no means easy or comfortable. For example, someone applying for the disability support pension has already experienced an invasive process of proving exactly how "disabled and deserving" they are, and must then relive that experience for the AAT.
The AAT has been unable to say how many of the appeals it receives relate to the so-called "robo-debt" scheme. But we know a high number of these "debts" are wrong, so it's fair to say some of the appeals do relate to robo-debts. One of the many ridiculous things about this scheme is that, while it was designed to make "savings", the latest data show the government has spent $400 million to claw back only $500 million.
In my years in the Senate, I've seen many attempts to make savings out of those on income support. Imagine if the government went after the finance and banking industry with half the vigour and persistence that it chased people on income support through robo-debt.
The latest crop of AAT appointees have spent years within political parties that say people should just "get a job" amid proven structural unemployment, and which argue that the dire poverty and extreme stress they face are not urgent matters. The apointment of political mates could have significant consequences for these people's lives.
The tide of public opinion is turning against punitive welfare approaches, because evidence shows they are ineffective and damaging. Nearly everyone knows someone who has been affected and who didn't deserve the appalling treatment they received.
My concern is that these latest AAT appointments will lock in this government's ideological attitudes even as welfare policy moves on. Who knows what will the real cost of these appointments will be.
Correction: In an earlier version of this article, Rachel Siewert wrongly accused Christian Porter of calling disabled people a "$17 billion burden". The Australian newspaper, not Porter, labelled the disability pension a $17 billion burden in a headline, which Porter later shared on Twitter.
Senator Rachel Siewert is the Australian Greens' co-deputy leader and party-room whip.
