Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Hansard source

No. It is a question to the parliamentary secretary. I do not think you would know what is in the mind of the parliamentary secretary. I am making the point that this whole process has really become something of a farce, which it never used to be before. It used to be used to elicit useful information and specific answers to questions. I might be kind to the parliamentary secretary and say that this was the practice that existed before he came to this place. It is a new and novel development that we are seeing here. With that prefix to my questions I will be interested to hear his response.

The questions that I specifically would like answers to relate to the funding of a review of illegal boat arrivals and the Ombudsman. I notice in budget paper No. 2 in the Prime Minister and Cabinet section that $900,000 has been earmarked over two years to continue the Ombudsman's scrutiny of processing refugee claims for irregular maritime arrivals by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The budget paper claims that the funding will be used out of the Ombudsman's current resources. My first question that I would like a response to is: what duties will that mean that the Ombudsman cannot do that he would otherwise would have done with those resources, because $900,000 of his money has been earmarked for this specific purpose? My second question is: in 2007-08 there were 25 unauthorised arrivals. That was the result of our effective Pacific Solution policy, which of course was ended by the government in 2008 and the boat arrivals started to arrive. In 2009-10 there were 5,614 arrivals. If we start to see an increase, or the increase as we have seen continues, will the Ombudsman need more than $900,000 to fund these claims, and if he does will he be able to get that from an advance from the minister for finance or some other mechanism?

My third question is: by giving this responsibility, to the Ombudsman, does this effectively amount to a vote of no confidence in the department of immigration which I note has had its numbers increased to carry out its tasks? My fourth question is: does the scrutiny process entail reviewing every single refugee application, or doing a random sample of applications? Is there an anticipated individual assessment cost for each inquiry it makes? A further question is, has the scrutiny which the Ombudsman has already carried out revealed an increased number of refugee claims from irregular maritime arrivals in the past three years, and can we have precise details of that?

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