Paul Scarr (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Multicultural Engagement) Share this | Hansard source

With due respect, Minister, I'm not sure how it's unfair to pick two points in time to analyse the performance of a new tribunal. I would have thought it's fair and reasonable. The first point in time is when you got rid of the previous tribunal, and the next point in time is the current case load. I can't think of a more fair way to assess the performance of a new tribunal than to consider what the position was before you introduced the tribunal that the Attorney said would increase speed, efficiency and fairness. Now we're comparing it to the current position in terms of case load. I'm not sure there could be any more reasonable way of assessing the performance of the tribunal.

But I'll try with another statistic, and this is in relation to the protection case load. As at 31 October, there were 41,476 cases on hand, and, under the new tribunal, that number again has blown out to 43,605 cases on hand. That's an increase of more than 2,000 protection cases in just over two months. Again, what has gone wrong?