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

Given that improving the performance of the then AAT with the new tribunal, the ART, was one of the core objectives of the bill, let me ask you about a comparison of the performance of the ART with that of the Immigration Assessment Authority. The Immigration Assessment Authority, the IAA, was tasked with the fast-track review of what are called fast-track reviewable decisions. As I understand it, these were generally decisions made by a delegate of the minister to refuse to grant a protection visa to a 'fast-track applicant'. A fast-track applicant is 'an unauthorised maritime arrival who entered Australia between 13 August 2012 and 31 December 2013 who has not been taken to an offshore processing country and has been permitted by the minister to make a protection visa application'. In short, they were the legacy case load that resulted from Labor's disastrous mismanagement of our borders under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. Fast-track applicants who previously might have gone to the IAA are the cohort who would now fall in the protection case load of the ART. Is it correct that those matters which previously went to the IAA would now fall within the province of the ART?