Page 3473 - Week 11 - Thursday, 19 September 2013
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yet today they are willing to potentially prevent a group of residents of Uriarra from being able to seek judicial review of a decision if there are legitimate grounds for questioning the lawfulness of the decision.
Another issue that has been canvassed by the government and which I would like to address is the issue of statements of reasons. I cannot believe a government could bring itself to actually say it is worried about having to give reasons for its decisions. I appreciate there is a resource cost to having to formally write up statements of reasons, but, of course, the better the reasons one has for a decision the easier it is to write them down. As I said before, the universal truth is that a requirement to give reasons improves the quality of decision-making. Any additional resource costs I believe are well worth it.
I will briefly address some of the issues raised in the scrutiny report, firstly, by noting that the expansion of the availability of judicial review is consistent with the right protected by section 21 of the Human Rights Act. More substantially, the committee’s concern centred around properly balancing an individual’s right to privacy with protection of the rule of law. I am firmly of the view that the bill strikes the right balance. It ensures that where the matters raised involve an individual and do not raise significant issues for the community, those whose interests are not affected by the decision will not be able to seek review. Where the matter is of significant public importance, the matter will be able to be heard and decided by the court. I do not believe that, in reality, this will mean a significant limitation on a person’s rights, although I accept that it is a possibility.
This balance fulfils the requirements of section 28 of the Human Rights Act. I think it would be a very tough task indeed to mount an argument that protecting the rule of law in matters of significant public importance was not a legitimate end for which a potential limitation on the right to privacy is justified.
To finish where I began, for all the complexity in the application and the initial barrier that the technical legal issues associated with AD(JR) review present, this bill is a very simple change that reflects a very simple principle. There are only 12 non-executive members in this place, and they cannot possibly hold the government to account for every decision it makes. As the volume and scope of administrative decision-making increases, the only way to ensure that the decisions that are made are made according to the laws that govern them is through judicial review. The current limitation on access to the courts to seek review is a significant barrier to government accountability.
Outside the parliament and elections, there are really only three mechanisms to ensure government accountability: oversight and integrity agencies, public access to government information, and judicial review. Either one believes the community has a limited role in being able to remedy deficient government decision-making, in which case the current rules should be supported, or one believes that the community has a legitimate role and that, by the very nature of public decision-making, it is legitimate for the community to be able to ensure those decisions are made correctly.
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