QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE

Senator WATT (Queensland—Minister for the Environment and Water) (14:21): Thanks, Senator Waters. Of course the answer is no. The reality is that there are visa holders who are on bridging visas for a range of legitimate reasons, and they need to be processed.

One of the reasons we have seen the number of bridging visa holders blow out so significantly is that, unfortunately, we have seen some people on visas abuse the system, hop from visa to visa, in an attempt to remain in Australia longer than they are entitled to. Now, if you're going to support that kind of behaviour, that actually undermines our entire migration system and it undermines public confidence in our migration system.

What our government is about is putting in place a sustainable, fair migration system that allows Australia to continue to accept numbers of migrants in a way that our country has done for decades but without the rorts that continue to exist in the system and that we're determined to clean up. The PRESIDENT: Senator Waters, second supplementary?