A barrister working on the body that reviews government decisions alleges a former Liberal senator heading up the section examining social security appeals shifted him out of the area because he found against the government too often.
Michael Manetta says any suggestion Administrative Appeal Tribunal (AAT) members should have to watch how often they overturn government decisions is corrosive and “completely at odds with the rule of law”.
Political appointments to the AAT have skyrocketed over the term of the Coalition government.Credit:iStock
Political appointments to the AAT have skyrocketed over the term of the Coalition government. Over the past three years, two in five people put on the tribunal have had political backgrounds – eight times higher than in the Howard era, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age exclusively reported on Monday.
Manetta has been on the AAT since 2016 and was reappointed in May last year after a routine performance review by a retired federal judge.
But he says in June, the social security section’s deputy president, Karen Synon, told him there had been a high number of appeals of his decisions by the department.
Synon, who filled a casual vacancy in 1997 to become a Liberal senator until 1999, was a part-time member of the AAT’s migration division and its precursors since 2001. In December 2020, the government elevated her to the full-time senior role of deputy president of the social services section.
During the 2019 election, she was pictured on social media with campaign posters for Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. AAT officials told the Senate last year the then-president discussed the code of conduct requiring impartiality with Synon, and she deleted the post.
Out of more than 300 cases Manetta worked, he said the department appealed 24 of his decisions and won nine.
He believes the department has been incorrectly calculating people’s entitlement to welfare under longstanding policies that he likens to the “robodebt” debt recovery scheme, a key element of which was found to be unlawful.
“Robodebt did not emerge until it hit the courts. For years it was an emerging problem in the AAT, but as soon as they hit the courts it became a catastrophe,” he said.
“I stood by my decisions and explained [to Synon] that there were what I considered to be recurring errors in the policies applied by the department which have never been resolved as a matter of law. We discussed ways in which these questions of law might be resolved by the AAT internally. Nothing ever came of that.”
In September, Synon removed him from hearing social services cases to work only on matters deciding child support care percentages, which Manetta described as “stressful and tedious work” and “latrine duty”.
He’s now escalated complaints about the movement to AAT president Fiona Meagher.
This masthead asked the AAT whether Synon held concerns about the number of Manetta’s decisions that went against the government.
“The AAT president is aware of matters raised by member Michael Manetta and these are currently being considered in consultation with deputy president Synon,” a spokesperson said.
Manetta said his sidelining was likely to have a chilling effect.
“It puts pressure on members to monitor their track record to keep one eye on how many times they’re deciding against the government,” he said.
“That is incompatible with their independence. And it’s completely at odds with the rule of law.
“All lawyers, irrespective of their politics are trained to revere [the rule of law], basically … and I think part of the problem is, if you have non-lawyers in high positions, in tribunals of this kind, these sorts of mistakes get made. ”
Jo Dyer, an independent candidate for the South Australian seat of Boothby who has campaigned on integrity issues, said Manetta’s allegation showed the “jobs for mates” approach to the AAT was resulting in “ideologically skewed outcomes for these vulnerable people”.
The blow-out in the number of political appointees to the tribunal has led to calls, including from a Senate committee, for its membership to be scrapped and started again.
“It is difficult to see how you can unscramble that egg,” Dyer said.
“When you’ve got a position where some people feel they can no longer work from within, you have to question whether or not it is now so riddled with mates and corrupt appointments … that does mean that if there is a change of government, they’re going to have to look very closely at how they can restore integrity to that institution.”
The government says all appointments to the tribunal are made on merit and meet legislative requirements.
“This means ensuring that the AAT is constituted by people who have a wide range of experiences and different records of service to our community,” a spokesman said in response to questions put to Attorney-General Michaelia Cash.
“The government is committed to giving the AAT the resources it needs to provide high-quality merits review with minimum delay.”
Manetta ran as a Liberal candidate in the SA election in 2014, a fact that was twice raised in parliament by Labor senators asking about his appointment, along with others with political connections, in 2016.
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