Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

It's 48,000. It keeps on growing. Senator Scarr, if we give this speech next week, it'll go up again. But, again, this is the issue. It costs the Australian taxpayer $1 billion. It's a billion dollars, and they were sold a pup. It's a billion dollars, and they were told, 'We are going to bring all of these waiting times down.' Guess what? These are the statistics. The government cannot resile from them in their talking points, and quite frankly the statistics are an absolute indictment on the government.

This is not a minor administrative inconvenience. This is now a serious problem for the integrity and credibility of Commonwealth decision-making. What is the government trying to do with this bill? I have to say, this is where the irony, quite frankly, is even greater. What we are agreeing to today is something that the Liberal Party had argued for consistently. So what are we doing? We will establish a fast-track on-the-papers review process for certain visa decisions, particularly student visa refusal decisions. Why? It's because we agree that, with the blowout in the wait times and the decision-making, we actually do now need a process that will cut through the backlog and deliver timely outcomes.