Amanda Vanstone (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

My advice is that there are about 7,000 people on BVEs in Australia, many of whom are making arrangements to leave and many of whom are people who would have put their asylum claim in within 45 days—that is, they came here with the intention of doing it. That is fair enough. That is what it is meant to be: you can come to Australia, seek asylum and be dealt with properly. There will be others within that group who will not have applied within 45 days and a number—and I cannot put a figure on it—who will only have discovered in their own minds that they might need protection about seven years after getting here when they have finally been caught overstaying. It is amazing what insight people have into the protection they need once they have been caught, and that just further delays it.

Through you, Madam Temporary Chairman, the senator raises one of the problems with the immigration system. She talks of a family who have been here for eight years going through the processes. When you consider that the immigration department either wins or the other side withdraws from over 90 per cent of their cases, you have to ask yourself: who is telling some of these people to hold on and waste their money, time and effort and, more importantly, their own heartstrings and nervous energy pursuing a matter to the nth degree?

We have a system that enables people to do that. I have indicated that we are reviewing the system. We want something that is more sensible, but the proposition being put—that everybody on a bridging visa who does not have work rights is a person who is being persecuted and not looked after—is frankly crazy. People who need it can get the asylum seeker assistance, and we are not going to set up a system whereby people will be given lawful status in Australia and work rights to stay forever and a day. We will set up a system that we think is simpler, cleaner and therefore, I think, fairer but it will have an end point.