Christian Porter appointed a Liberal party member to a lucrative government job just three days before she unsuccessfully contested preselection for the Victorian federal seat of Higgins.
On Thursday the attorney general appointed lawyer Jane Bell to the administrative appeals tribunal, along with 14 other former Coalition parliamentarians and staffers, including his own former senior adviser William Frost.
On Sunday Bell, a solicitor for 22 years, board member of Monash Health and deputy chair of Biomedical Research Victoria, lost the Higgins preselection to paediatrician Katie Allen. Bell got a part-time position at the AAT while Frost was appointed full-time, a position that attracts a $244,000 salary.
The Coalition has come under fire from Labor for stacking the tribunal, which has wide-ranging powers to review government and administrative decisions in areas including appeals against robodebts and asylum applications.
The latest crop of appointments led the Law Council of Australia to renew calls for a transparent, merit-based process because of fears the tribunal’s independence and integrity would be compromised.
Of the 34 new appointments announced on Thursday, six were former Coalition parliamentarians and eight were former Coalition staffers, including Frost, a senior adviser to Porter from 2015 to 2019 during his stints as social services minister and attorney general. Just one former Labor MP, David Cox, was appointed.
Porter told Guardian Australia that Bell had nominated for Higgins “after the substantive preselection process but before her final appointment”.
“There is no reason why a person during the selection and appointment process for the AAT is not able to nominate for a preselection or commence other employment application processes, if that is their wish,” he said.
“In this case, Ms Bell was not successful so it has no impact on her ability to take up the AAT role.”
Porter said Frost was “an experienced lawyer and there is no question that he’s an outstanding candidate for the position, bringing extensive legal knowledge and practical experience in administrative law”.
“Labor appointed a number of its former staff to roles within the AAT and the latest round of appointments announced by me last week includes the reappointment of some of those staff and, indeed, the new appointment of a former Labor parliamentarian.”
On Monday Porter told 6PR radio he was keen to appoint “people who would reflect community values in migration decisions, because we have had a very large number of ministerial migration decisions overturned by the AAT”.
He cited the independent tribunal’s decision to overturn 39% of migration cases, more than 4,000 in the past year.
The home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has been pushing to restrict the AAT’s powers of review, claiming that it is out of step with community standards in overturning departmental cancellations of visas on character grounds.
On Friday the Law Council president, Arthur Moses SC, said the legal profession was concerned and troubled by the latest round of appointments.
“The independence and integrity of the AAT depends on an apolitical, open and merit-based appointment system,” he said.
“The federal government’s announcement of 34 new appointments to the AAT made without community consultation and 52 reappointments for existing members is concerning.”
Moses cited the number of reappointments of existing members “well before the expiry of their current terms”.
“In the context of an upcoming federal election, [this] may give rise to a reasonable apprehension that decisions are affected by political considerations and therefore compromises the reputation of the tribunal.”
The shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has accused the Coalition of a “shameful record” of stacking the tribunal by making 86 appointments “full of Liberal mates”.
On Monday Porter was forced to defend the appointment of the former Western Australian Liberal MP Joe Francis, and deny that Francis had provided free campaign buses to the Liberal party, after the revelation the party agreed to purchase three campaign buses from a company managed by Francis months before the appointment.
