Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

This is a report from the Refugee Review Tribunal looking at those refugee review cases that had not been completed within 90 days. This is also linked to the changes that were announced by the government in mid-2005 in an attempt to try and alleviate the public and political pressure on them to make our refugee determination system more humane and more efficient. Those changes required a report to be tabled every three months in the parliament detailing the number of cases that had not been completed within 90 days. That was an attempt to try and increase the impetus, if you like, for the speed of protection claims to be assessed and then, in this case, reviewed by the Refugee Review Tribunal.

Of course it is nice to have this data, but it does not actually make anything happen. It needs to be emphasised that all this does is report how things are going. If the deadline of 90 days is not met, there is no penalty. There is no other consequence beyond just the ability for people like me to point it out and suggest that we need to do better.

The report details the circumstance of the last reporting period, which is from November 2006 to the end of February this year. There were 1,116 reviews completed during that reporting period. I pause to emphasise that number: in that three-month period, over 1,100 reviews of refugee claims were made. It is a reminder that, particularly these days, the vast majority of asylum claims or protection claims are not from people who arrive in boats, for all the hysteria about that. For all of the perversion of our Migration Act that was driven by the hysteria, the distortions, the deceit and the exaggerations about boat arrivals, the vast majority of asylum claims, particularly these days, are not from boat arrivals.

In a three-month period, the number of just those who sought to get a review from the tribunal was over 1,100. It demonstrates that there are still plenty of people claiming protection. Most of those would have arrived on a lawful visa. The sky did not fall in because we had 1,000 people wandering around the community who were claiming protection, and the sky has not fallen in because these people have not been locked up whilst their protection visa claims are assessed. We have the bizarre situation where some people are locked up for years and years because they seek protection, having arrived one way, and yet another group of people are not locked up at all whilst their claims are being assessed.

This report shows that, out of those 1,116 reviews, 22 per cent were decided outside the 90-day period. Another 521 cases were still on hand that had not had decisions finalised, and 85 of those, which is more than 22 per cent but less than 30 per cent, were over the 90-day period. So a significant number—around about a quarter—of the applications to the Refugee Review Tribunal are not being met within that 90-day guideline. I think the tribunal has been doing better in trying to process its claims more efficiently and, whilst speed is important, you certainly do not want that to occur if it means compromising the accuracy of decisions, particularly if it means making a wrong decision and sending a person back to face persecution. But it reinforces the fact that there are still significant delays for some of these people. Not all of them are the fault of the tribunal, but it is important to continue to highlight both the number of people who are seeking protection and how well we are proceeding in keeping those claims processed as quickly as possible.

Question agreed to.