Leahy and Tax Practitioners Board

The Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) considered an application for recusal of a Senior Member in the matter of *Leahy and Tax Practitioners Board*. The applicant, Mr Leahy, sought the recusal of the Senior Member on the grounds of apprehended bias, alleging that the Senior Member had been exposed to extraneous information that might influence their decision-making. The Tax Practitioners Board was the respondent in the proceedings.

The central legal issue before the Tribunal was whether there was a reasonable apprehension of bias on the part of the Senior Member, such that it would be in the interests of justice for the Senior Member to recuse themselves from hearing the substantive application. This required the Tribunal to assess whether a fair-minded lay observer, informed of all the relevant circumstances, would apprehend that the Senior Member might not bring an impartial mind to the issues before them.

The Tribunal applied the established test for apprehended bias, which requires consideration of whether the circumstances would lead a reasonable member of the public to conclude that the decision-maker might be prejudiced. In this instance, the Tribunal found that the Senior Member had indeed been exposed to information that was not properly before them for the determination of the substantive matter. The Tribunal concluded that this exposure, even if unintentional, could give rise to a perception of bias in the eyes of a fair-minded observer.

Consequently, the Tribunal granted the application for recusal. The Senior Member determined that it was in the interests of justice for the proceedings to be heard by a different member of the Tribunal.