Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

Sorry, I am sure that you had said refugee claims, but we will take it as asylum seeker claims, which he is going to fund from current resources. With respect to the other questions that were directed to apparently additional unauthorised arrivals. Can I say that it is an excellent measure that the Ombudsman is now undertaking additional scrutiny for processing asylum seeker claims. Implied in the member for Mackellar's question is the suggestion that perhaps this scrutiny is not warranted. I can assure the House that this scrutiny is absolutely warranted, and it is reflective of much greater care in the way in which these asylum seeker claims are being handled, and indeed much greater care in the way in which the entire system is being run.

I need only refer in that regard to the appalling compensation bill that the Commonwealth is still facing, arising from people, some of them Australian citizens, detained in the immigration detention system by the Howard government before August 2007. There is a budget item that relates to the compensation bill. It is now over $16 million and these cases, and the compensation provision that is having to be made, almost all relate to the 247 cases that were referred by the department to the Ombudsman following the Palmer inquiry and the Comrie report with such notorious cases as the case of Vivian Solon, falsely deported from Australia by the former government, or Cornelia Rau, improperly and illegally detained over an extended period by the former government as a result of the appalling mismanagement of the immigration detention system by the former government and the lack of scrutiny, scrutiny which is now to be provided by the Ombudsman as indicated in the budget papers. The member for Mackellar was referring to the claim that in 2007 there were some 25 unauthorised arrivals, which of course is held out by the opposition as some claim to the success of their policies. It was no such thing. As I have just indicated, arising from the mismanagement of the immigration detention system, under the Howard government there were much larger numbers of people in immigration detention, an indication why we need to have scrutiny. We need the Ombudsman looking at these things. (Time expired)

See this speech in context