Administrative and Judicial Review Legislation Amendment Bill 2026
23 July 2026
On 15 July 2026, the Law Council provided a submission in response to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee’s inquiry into the Administrative and Judicial Review Legislation Amendment Bill 2026. The submission reflected input from the Administrative Law and Migration Law Committees of the Federal Dispute Resolution Section, the Law Institute of Victoria, the Law Society of the Australian Capital Territory, the Law Society of New South Wales and the Law Society of Western Australia.
The Law Council recognised the need to ensure the efficiency of the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) and supported a number of the Bill's proposed measures to this end, including to assign the President to every jurisdictional area of the ART, revise the means by which members are reappointed, provide a mechanism to reclassify a full-time member of the ART as a sessional member (and vice versa), correct errors in orders of registrars, clarify procedures for applying for leave to examine or cross-examine witnesses, and change the method by which the Secretary of the Department of Home Affairs is notified of decisions.
However, the Law Council expressed concerns about a number of other measures of the Bill and their implications for procedural fairness and access to justice, particularly for vulnerable and unrepresented migration applicants. Those measures include proposals to expand the powers of registrars of the ART to make orders to dismiss an application, including on the basis that it has no reasonable prospects of success; to accommodate a Christmas shutdown period for agencies but not applicants; to permit ART members to give oral decisions in migration cases and only provide statements of reasons at the request of a party to the review; and to introduce new requirements for identity verification procedures. The Law Council also observed that only a short timeframe was provided for consideration of the Bill and referred the Committee to its Best Practice Legislative Development Checklist.
Last Updated on 22/07/2026