Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the senator for her question and her ongoing interest in this issue. I will get the Senate the exact figure, but the last time I looked the average processing time was around 115 days. It has crept up a little bit in recent times but been fairly steady around that mark for a while. The Senate would be aware that the statutory requirement of 90 days is not applicable on Christmas Island, but we attempt to meet the same target, as we think that is a reasonable target. It is true, though, that the average has been impacted by the delay in being able to successfully process the claims of a cohort of persons who arrived early in the second half of last year.

The senator would be aware that most of those arrivals were Sri Lankans of Tamil origin. There has been a delay in processing their security clearances because of the situation and the concern about LTTE connections. The relevant agencies have found that the processing times for their security clearances have taken longer than average, and some of them are still outstanding despite those people having spent quite a lengthy period in detention. We do not want to hold people in detention for long periods, but it is equally true that we will not be making final decisions on people’s asylum claims until we have had those security issues dealt with by the relevant agencies and those persons cleared. So the average processing times are I think reasonable, but they are impacted by that cohort that has had security processing issues. (Time expired)