Appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal … System of preferment and patronage … The Christian Porter’s stack is the most audacious in living memory … Merit missing in action … Party hacks come home to roost … Where’s Tubby Callinan’s report? … Janek Drevikovsky goes through the list, name by name 

For the AAT to be turned into a job catchment scheme for political hacks is bad for confidence in its determinations. This appears to be of little concern to Porter who is intent on locking-in fellow travellers before the federal election. 

Of the 34 new appointments he announced on February 21 at least 14, over 40 percent, have direct connections to the Liberal or National Parties. 

Stacking the tribunal has been a long and unfortunate tradition by both sides of politics, but this is the most audacious and blatant stack ever. 

For many, the appointments come as a financial blessing with salaries of $244,000 plus extras for full-time members, and above $380,000 for senior members with perks to top it up. 

Littered throughout the list are people with little or no administrative law experience. A few are associated with Pascoe from his time at the Federal Magistrates Court and the Circuit Court. 

The appointment process is the result of party room lobbing, arm twisting and cronyism. According to the attorney general, the reason these people have made the cut is to help turn back the boats by declining applications from refugees and asylum seekers for visas. Or as he puts it: 

“I was very keen to get people who would reflect community values in migration decisions, because we have a very large number of ministerial migration decisions overturned by the AAT, about 39 percent last year …” 

Shadow AG, Mark Dreyfus says if elected he will put in place a “transparent, merits based” selection process that will apply to all federal courts (except the High Court, of course). 

Tubby Callinan finished his report on the tribunal last December but Porter has not released it, waiting first to make his new appointments and dozens of Abbott era reappointments.  

Justinian has annotated who’s who on the latest of new selections, and in the case of a few we have no information at all on their track record. A little star* denotes those with identifiable Coalition credentials …