Ms Joan Gordon:

The courts have been highly complimentary of the appeals process and have said routinely that decision-makers both in the Department and in the appeals office are probably the experts in this area and they have been reluctant to disturb the findings of fact of either decision makers. There are routes within the current legislation where a person can appeal on a point of law to the High Court. There is provision under section 306 whereby I can refer a question to the High Court but I have not found that to be necessary to use. Above any other area, both deciding officers and appeals officers are so much guided by precedents that have come from the courts. There is probably no other area in the social welfare code that has such an abundance of case law surrounding it, so it is probably not necessary to refer to the courts. I would probably expect that the court would send a case back to me, as it has sometimes done, and say the case should be resubmitted to an appeals officer to make the decision.