NLA welcomed the opportunity to provide a submission to the Administrative Review Council's Social Security Inquiry. Below is a summary of our recommendations.
A full version of our submission is available for download below and to the right.
Summary of recommendations
National Legal Aid (NLA) strongly supports two-tiers of review for matters in the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART). This two-tier system was a long-standing and effective feature of the former Administrative Appeals Tribunal for social security and child support matters. We have advocated to retain this system as we consider it’s the best forum to ensure a trauma-informed, non-adversarial approach to resolve social security and child support matters for clients in the ART. This also provides efficiency for legal assistance services, Government and the ART, in maintaining an efficient process to resolve matters in Tier 1.
NLA does not believe that adequate time has passed to review the implementation of the two tiers within ART under the new legislation, particularly without Practice Directions differentiating between the two tiers. We have recommended that we be given the opportunity to provide further feedback closer to the delivery date of the review, once more time has elapsed.
- Recommendation 1: Maintain the two-tier system of review for matters in the Administrative Review Tribunal.
- Recommendation 2: Continue Tier 1 matters as a non-adversarial process, without government representation.
- Recommendation 3: Develop Practice Directions for the two-tier system in the Administrative Review Tribunal.
- Recommendation 4: Develop an Administrative Review Tribunal referral system for all matters to legal assistance providers.
- Recommendation 5:
- Improve Authorised Review Officer internal review process timeframes and explanation of reasonings.
- Improve processes for the internal review of decisions under the Child Support Assessment Act 1989 (Cth) by amending legislation to allow representatives to lodge the applications/responses on behalf of their clients.
- Introduction of statutory time limits for the delivery of an ARO decision, we suggest a 90-day limit like the NDIS.
- Introduction of a customer service guarantee, like the NDIS.
- Recommendation 6: Implement a trauma-informed approach for NDIS matters in the Administrative Review Tribunal.
- Recommendation 7: Provide opportunity for further feedback closer to the delivery of the review in 2026.
