The AAT is to be scrapped. Good riddance

Elly Desmarchelier marched against the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. She celebrates the news it's to be abolished.

"Hey hey, ho ho,

The AAT has got to go. 

Hey hey, ho ho,

The AAT has got to go."

The chant rang out loudly through  Melbourne’s CBD as I was at the front of a protest of thousands of people with disability and their supporters. We were marching from the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) headquarters to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) building. 

It was a symbolic journey that took most people fighting the NDIA years, but only took us a slow 15 minute walk. 

Today, the Albanese Government has announced the AAT really is going. It’s to be abolished and replaced by a new independent review body that is “user-friendly, efficient, accessible, independent and fair.” 

Sounds good. I'll be very glad when it's gone. But of course the devil is in the delivery. 

The AAT was the body that oversaw and made judgements when an appeal was made against an NDIA decision. Attorney General Mark Dreyfus said today that the AAT’s “public standing has been irreversibly damaged”. From where I’ve been sitting, on that point he's right.  At worst it's destroyed lives through arbitrary, heavy-handed decisions. At best it's become much too politicised. At least 85 former Liberal MPs, Liberal staff or 'friends' have been appointed to the tribunal since 2013.

When I first became the National Spokesperson for the Defend Our NDIS campaign, I knew very little about the AAT. It simply wasn’t on my radar. 

That was soon to change. 

After launching the campaign outside Parliament House in Canberra, we immediately set about hosting ten virtual town-hall meetings in five days. To say the AAT was the number one issue raised is an understatement. 

What we heard was an avalanche of heartbreaking stories from people who had taken the NDIA to the AAT because they needed to appeal poor planning decisions and were now being dragged through a multi-year legal battle. 

The part that shocked me the most was that while most people with disability or their families were representing themselves, the NDIA paid top tier law firms to argue their case in the AAT. 

I lost count of the number of mums with young disabled children, particularly those with autism, who were sitting up at the kitchen table until 2am, 3am, 4am in the morning preparing legal documents. They’d then have to take them into the AAT to have to face off against five or six lawyers from the most expensive firms in town. 

That just didn’t pass anyone’s version of a fairness test. 

Far too many exhausted and burnt out disabled people told me the exact same thing - “the AAT is breaking me”. 

So good riddance. 

The government has made some big promises about how the new independent review body will operate. Having an independent appeal process for NDIA decisions is essential for upholding the promises at the heart of the scheme. We will hold the government accountable if they don’t deliver. 

Be warned. We’ll have a new chant in no time at all.