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

I wish to ask a question about the Ombudsman's task now that there are so many illegal boat arrivals. The Ombudsman was charged originally with responsibility for looking into many of those issues. When the funding was provided for the Ombudsman for the irregular maritime arrivals, as they are euphemistically called—it was agreed in 2008—there were expected to be 100 arrivals a year. Currently, there are 4,762 arrivals in immigration detention and more than 3,200 of those detainees have been in immigration detention for more than six months, making a case-by-case assessment increasingly impossible. The budget has really not been increased. I know we went through the procedures when a previous Ombudsman went to a Greens senator to complain and subsequently had his services terminated. Nonetheless, the current Ombudsman is still operating under the same funding arrangements, and I want to know why there has been no increase in that funding.

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