The Department of Social Services (the Department) recognises the importance of continuous engagement, reflection, and learning from Merits Review decisions made by the Administrative Review Tribunal (ART).
Merits Review is a vital part of Australia’s administrative law framework, allowing individuals to challenge decisions made by Commonwealth Government Departments and Agencies.
In turn, this provides the Department an important opportunity for in-depth analysis of relevant policy and legislation and how it is being applied.
We are committed to ensuring we are fulfilling our purpose of improving the social and economic wellbeing of the individuals, families and vulnerable Australians.
To do this, the Department will:
- regularly review ART decisions to ensure learnings are captured;
- identify ways to improve our existing policy and legislation;
- engage with Services Australia through feedback loops to ensure service delivery and policy are aligned and complies with the law, and that decision making is consistently improving.
These steps allow the Department to identify areas of policy or legislation that may be misapplied in practice, or have unintended consequences that are not reflective of policy objectives.
We are also committed to working with Services Australia to ensure there is a robust framework of processes and procedures in place to respond to review decisions.
More information
Information on Merits Review is available on the Administrative Review Tribunal webpage(Opens in a new tab/window) and from the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s investigative report ‘Learning from Merits Review: Best practice principles for agency engagement with merits review’ on the Commonwealth Ombudsman webpage (PDF)(Opens in a new tab/window).