Mr President, I ask a further supplementary question. I refer to the departmental secretary's response to the February estimates questions about the government's budgeted reduction in spending on illegal boat arrivals of $1 billion this financial year and a further $1 billion next financial year, and I quote:

Senator CASH: … do those figures represent what stopping the boats would look like?

Mr Bowles : Yes.

Given that there have been 7,889 illegal arrivals on 112 boats since that response, how can we believe anything the government says when it lives in fiscal fantasy?