Cornwell and Secretary, Department of Social Services (Social services second review)

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) considered a matter involving Mrs Cornwell and the Secretary of the Department of Social Services. Mrs Cornwell sought to have her application for a second review of a decision concerning her disability support pension, which she had withdrawn in 2013, re-opened. The dispute arose from Mrs Cornwell's request, made in 2022, to reactivate this withdrawn application, a significant period after its discontinuance.

The primary legal issue before the Tribunal was whether it possessed the power to re-open or extend time for an application that had been formally withdrawn and was therefore deemed dismissed under the relevant provisions of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975 (Cth). Specifically, the Tribunal had to determine if it could grant an extension of time under section 29(7) of the Act, or if the applicant was precluded from seeking reinstatement of her withdrawn application.

The Tribunal reasoned that section 42A(1B) of the AAT Act states that an application is taken to have been dismissed if the applicant notifies the Tribunal in writing that the application is discontinued or withdrawn. Furthermore, section 42A(8) of the Act permits only a party other than the applicant to apply for reinstatement of a deemed dismissed application within a specified period, which can be extended in special circumstances under section 42A(11). As Mrs Cornwell was the applicant who had withdrawn her application, she was specifically excluded from applying for its reinstatement. Given that the 28-day period for reinstatement had long expired and no application for extension had been made by the respondent, the Tribunal found it had no power to grant the applicant's request to re-open her 2013 application. The Tribunal concluded that, in the absence of a valid application before it, it lacked jurisdiction to grant an extension of time or to re-open the withdrawn matter.