13-NOV-2018 Administrative Appeals Tribunal Annual Report

The report contains an extensive amount of information covering the operations of the eight divisions of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT), including the Migration and Refugee Division (MRD), which receives the largest amount of applications for review.
Highlights from the report include:
The AAT now reviews decisions made under more than 400 laws in areas as diverse as migration and refugee visas and Australian citizenship, veteran’s entitlements, child support and Freedom of Information.
The AAT has 30 fewer members than it did at the time of amalgamation, while the caseload has increased by 42 per cent since 2015–16
The MRD is only funded to deliver review of 18,000 cases per year
In 2017/18 the MRD received 37,933 applications which equates to 65% of all applications lodged with the AAT and an increase of 43%
17,960 appeals were finalised during this period which represented 45% of the caseload, but a further 44,436 still awaiting review. This explains the long duration of waiting for some visa categories. Up to two years for Refuge/Humanitarian and Up to 1,5 years for Student visas.
Only 3.1% of decisions from the AAT were overturned on further appeal to the courts
The AAT published a total of almost 5000 decisions for the period. The number of published decisions is dropping and this creates difficulties in accessing the information to the latest approach used by the MRD.