MARK DREYFUS QC MP
SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL
SHADOW MINISTER FOR NATIONAL SECURITY
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
E&OE TRANSCRIPT
RADIO INTERVIEW
ABC RN BREAKFAST
FRIDAY, 1 FEBRUARY, 2019
SUBJECTS: Labor's plan to restore integrity to judicial appointments and the AAT; Murray-Darling Royal Commission
FRAN KELLY, HOST: Mark Dreyfus, welcome back to breakfast.
MARK DREYFUS, SHADOW ATTORNEY-GENERAL: Thanks for having me Fran.
KELLY: Why do we need to change the way judges are appointed?
DREYFUS: We think it's really important to get as much confidence as possible in our judicial system. And to that end, we think a robust, transparent system for appointing the members of the federal judiciary should be reintroduced. Whats happened under this government is what I would call a black box system where nobody knows what process is followed to make appointments, nobody knows who is consulted, there's no advertising, there's no means by which people can even put in an expression of interest in becoming a judge. We want to go back to the system that was in place when Robert McClelland, Nicola Roxon and I were Attorneys-General in the Rudd and Gillard governments.
KELLY: So what is that system? What are you proposing you'll do, if you win government?
DREYFUS: Well require that positions be publicly advertised, there'll be an independent panel, a different one for each jurisdiction, to conduct interviews and sift through the applications that are received and make a shortlist, make recommendations to the Attorney-General for going forward with appointments. Obviously appointments will still be the decision of the Attorney-General and cabinet but an important addition will be that if an appointment is made outside a shortlist, the Attorney-General will have to report that fact to Parliament and explain why an appointment was made outside the shortlist.
KELLY: But ultimately the Attorney-General will in the end appoint which is whats been going on under the coalition government for the last five or six years too.
DREYFUS: The Attorney-General and cabinet, because these are mostly cabinet appointments, and Governor in council appointments as well, it's important that the public be able to see how appointments are made. At the moment, under this government, it's impossible to see how appointments are made. We would also extend a similar system to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal which, although it's not part of the judiciary, is equally something that the public need to have confidence in.
KELLY: I'll come to the AAT in a moment but just to stay with the judicial appointments, can people imply from what you're saying that appointments to the courts have not been based on merit and therefore are not the best appointments?
DREYFUS: I am not going to criticise any individual appointments that have been made to any federal court. I think that would be highly inappropriate. But I would say, and just to take this as a single example, it's concerning that the balance of gender in the appointments to the federal courts has woefully slipped under this government. There are far fewer women having been appointed in the last five and a half years by this government compared with six years of the Labor government and I think Australians are entitled to see a federal judiciary which is reflective of our community.
KELLY: So will Labor's framework have gender targets or quotas in it?
DREYFUS: No, I don't think we need to have gender targets, I think however that we can be confident that with a more robust and more transparent system such as we are proposing, that we will be able to turn to a higher level of appointments of women to the federal judiciary such as occurred in the six years of the Labor government.
KELLY: I think we better be quite clear what you're saying here though because under the coalition government there been at least two new appointments, perhaps more, I'm not sure to the High Court. We've had new appointments in the Family Court, and the Circuit Court, are you casting any doubt over those appointments?
DREYFUS: I'm pointing at the statistics. Only 30 per cent of appointments in the last five and a half years to the High Court and Federal Courts have been women
KELLY: I'm not talking about gender here, I'm talking about capacity, capability.
DREYFUS: I'm not casting any reflection at all, on any individual appointments to the courts. I'm saying that to build confidence, so that people know when they are appearing in a federal court before a judge, people need to know that a robust system was used to make the appointments in the first place. These are appointments that very often are putting people in a job for 20 or 25 years up to age 70. It's the longest term of appointment that you can get, anywhere in our system of government and the more robust, the more transparent, the more integrity that we can bring to the system, the better because people do need to be confident in the way in which the appointments are made.
KELLY: Mark Dreyfus you said you will bring the same process to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal if you won government and you were the Attorney-General. There are reports in some media today that the Morrison government is right now moving to re-appoint dozens of members to the AAT, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, despite the fact that their terms end in June. So not long after the election which is due in May. Would that tie Labor's hands and do you support the government doing this? Is that good process to get this all ready and going?
DREYFUS: It is not good process. We are very concerned about the way in which this government has treated the AAT as simply a place to put former Liberal politicians, state and federal former Liberal staffers, and there are numerous examples of this. It's a very important tribunal. Their government, under no circumstances, should be rushing to re-appoint well ahead of the usual time. Anyone whose term on the AAT is coming to an end, it's not appropriate to be reappointing someone six months out from where their term applies, and we are very concerned at the report that I read today that the government is proposing to do just that. They have already stacked the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. It is of course not part of the judiciary, it's an arm of the executive, and I feel much freer to criticise what has happened there. We will not be continuing with the practice that the government has adopted of appointing former Liberal politicians, state and federal, and people like the former Chief of Staff to the Attorney-General, the former Chief of Staff to Scott Morrison. I could go on, there's a long list. But reappointing them six months out from their terms expiring would be quite wrong.
KELLY: Just finally can I ask you, as Shadow Attorney-General, the Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin the South Australian Royal Commission one of the findings was that politics not science drove the plan, and it found that the Authority acted unlawfully, and the plan itself, the basis of it was in breach of the federal Water Act. As the Shadow Attorney-General, would you like a future Labor government to overhaul the current plan which was signed into law of course by the Gillard Labor government?
DREYFUS: This is a very important report. I hope it's going to be another opportunity we've had many to reset and work harder to restore the health of the Murray and the Darling, the Murray-Darling Basin System. Any report of a weighty Royal Commission conducted in this case by a very, very eminent Australian lawyer, Bret Walker, we have to take seriously. Particularly if there are findings of unlawfulness. Well be considering this weighty report at 746 pages long. It's got 44 recommendations, and responding when we can. But the findings are obviously very concerning.
KELLY: Mark Dreyfus thanks very much for joining us.
DREYFUS: Thank you Fran.
ENDS
