Western Australian statutory bodies and regulators 

Merits review explains that "most Australian states and territories run their own tribunals" without naming any of them, and deliberately tells the reader to "check the specific enabling legislation for the decision in question." This supplement is that check, for Western Australia: four bodies a WA problem question will actually send a student to, not a generic description of the roles they fill.

What stays shared

The concepts stay national: what counts as administrative action, when merits review is available in principle, and what an ombudsman-type office does as a matter of institutional design. What changes by jurisdiction is which body actually holds that role, under which Act, with which specific powers. Naming the wrong body, or assuming a Commonwealth-style institution exists in WA under the same name, is a common and avoidable error.

Merits review: the State Administrative Tribunal

The State Administrative Tribunal (SAT) is WA's general merits-review tribunal, established by the State Administrative Tribunal Act 2004 (WA).¹ It does not have one free-standing grant of review power; instead, more than 150 separate "enabling Acts" each confer jurisdiction over specific kinds of decisions. Before assuming SAT can review a WA decision, a student must check whether the particular Act under which the decision was made is one of SAT's enabling Acts, not simply assume a general right of review exists because the decision was administrative. Full factsheet: State Administrative Tribunal (WA).

Land regulation: Landgate

Landgate — formally the Western Australian Land Information Authority — is established by the Land Information Authority Act 2006 (WA) as a statutory authority with commercial powers.² It administers WA's land title register, survey plans and valuation rolls, and regulates land surveyors. This is the concrete WA institution behind the Torrens title material in Torrens title and land registration: when that article says registration is "administered separately by each state and territory," Landgate is what that means in Western Australia. Full factsheet: Landgate (WA).

General administrative complaints: the WA Ombudsman

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Administrative Investigations — known as the WA Ombudsman — is established by the Parliamentary Commissioner Act 1971 (WA), the first such office legislated in Australia.³ It is an independent officer of Parliament, not part of the executive it investigates, and its function is investigating complaints about matters of administration by WA public authorities, local government and public universities. It does not decide legal rights the way SAT does, and it does not investigate corruption as such. Full factsheet: WA Ombudsman.

Integrity and misconduct: the Corruption and Crime Commission

The Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) is established by the Corruption, Crime and Misconduct Act 2003 (WA) with functions relating to corruption, crime and misconduct in the WA public sector.⁴ Its remit is integrity oversight, not merits review of individual decisions and not general maladministration complaints — a problem naming corrupt conduct, not simply an unfavourable or poorly explained decision, is what points toward the CCC rather than the Ombudsman or SAT. The CCC's own conduct is overseen by the Parliamentary Inspector of the CCC. Full factsheet: Corruption and Crime Commission (WA).

Other WA statutory bodies with individual factsheets

Not every WA statutory body fits the merits-review/land-registration/complaints/integrity spread above. Three more have their own factsheets: the Economic Regulation Authority (electricity, gas, water and rail regulation), the Legal Aid Commission of Western Australia (legal aid funding and guidelines), and the Health and Disability Services Complaints Office (sector-specific complaints for health and disability services).

Worked overlay example

A WA regulator refuses to renew a licence. The holder believes the decision was both wrong on the merits and that the officer who made it may have taken a bribe.

A structured answer would:

1. separate the two complaints — a wrong decision is not evidence of corruption, and a complaint about corruption does not itself get the licence renewed;
2. for the merits question, check whether the regulator's enabling Act confers SAT jurisdiction over this kind of decision;
3. for a general complaint about how the matter was handled, short of corruption, consider the Ombudsman;
4. for the corruption allegation specifically, consider the CCC, whose function is different in kind from either of the other two; and
5. note that these avenues are not mutually exclusive, but each is answering a different question.

Self-check

Before treating a WA institutional answer as complete, ask:

• Have I named the actual body, not just described its function generically?
• Have I checked the specific enabling Act rather than assuming SAT (or any tribunal) has jurisdiction by default?
• Have I kept merits review, general administration complaints and integrity oversight separate, since a WA problem may point to only one of them?
• Have I flagged that departmental and ministerial arrangements should be checked separately from the enabling Act, since those change more often than the legislation itself?