George Brandis Just Appointed A Bunch Of Ex-Politicians To Cushy Government Roles

Everyone’s favourite Attorney-General, George Brandis, has handed out some very nice Christmas presents to a slew of former federal politicians.

This afternoon Brandis announced he was making 17 new appointments to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). The AAT reviews government decisions in a bunch of areas including taxation, migration, freedom of information and welfare payments.

The appointments include a number of experienced legal figures, including Milton Griffin QC, a Queensland judge.

But Brandis has also found space to appoint some former colleagues, from both the Liberal and Labor parties, to the AAT.

Former Liberal MPs Andrew Nikolic and Russell Matheson, who lost their jobs at the last election, have been appointed as full-time members. Neither of them have legal experience.

Nikolic and Matheson have been appointed for seven-year terms and will receive a full remuneration package worth up to $230,000 a year.

Former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Labor MP Anna Burke, has also been appointed to a seven-year term. Another former Labor politician, Linda Kirk QC, has been awarded a part-time position.

Before entering parliament Burke worked for the Finance Sector Union as an industrial officer.

Unlike the other political appointees, Kirk has a solid background in law. She studied her Masters of Law at Cambridge and is currently a member of the Refugee Review Tribunal, a body that reviews government decisions concerning the cases of individual refugees in Australia.

In July BuzzFeed reported that Brandis apppointed a Liberal party donor to the AAT just before this year’s federal election. The donor, Theo Tavoularis, also represented Brandis’ son in court.

Both sides of politics tend to appoint their own to these kinds of government roles, but the Coalition seems to taken have things to another level in the last 12 months.

Just before the last federal election the government made more than 100 appointments to government bodies. Labor initiated a Senate inquiry into the appointments, accusing Brandis of failing to declare their political affiliations.

Brandis hit back and pointed out that the President of the AAT is Duncan Kerr, a former Labor MP who was appointed by a Labor government.

How good is politics? You might get thrown out by your electorate, but regardless of your party afiiliation your mates in government will look after you and give you long-term job earning nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year.