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Australia’s Administrative Review Tribunal has been swamped with almost 40,000 applications to review migration decisions in this financial year alone, as the political fight over immigration heats up.
A Senate estimates hearing was told on Tuesday the tribunal, which provides independent review of government decisions, had received a whopping 46,653 applications to review migration decisions in 2024-25, representing about 56 per cent of the Tribunal’s caseload.
In the year to April 30, the ART had already received 39,953 applications.
Principal Registrar Michael Hawkins AM told the hearing student application decisions in particular were the largest cohort being determined by the ART, representing some 35 per cent of the Tribunal’s total caseload.
In 2024-25, the ART received 32,202 lodgements concerning student or study visas, which contain different visa classes.
To April 30, there had been 24,545.
“Our priority has been the protection caseload, which take two to three days each case,” Mr Hawkins said, referring to a visa type that includes asylum seekers.
“What we’re looking at in the future is our student visa caseload, which is going to be our backlog.”
Mr Hawkins said student cases take about one day each to process.
Pressure on the ART has been a persistent problem for the independent body, which handles reviews of everything from visa applications to social security.
Mr Hawkins told Liberal Senator Michaelia Cash the ART was on target to finalise 60,000 matters in total in 2025-26.
Out of a target of 68,000, however, that would represent only 92 per cent of the ART’s target.
That is “with only 75 per cent of our budgeted members”, he said.
More than 40 new ART members are due to start in July, which still leaves the Tribunal short 80 full-time equivalent positions.
“I’m very proud of for our members and registrars, though obviously worked very, very hard to achieve that type of outcome,” Mr Hawkins said.
“We have a new batch of members commencing on June 1. We’ve got 42 new members starting on June 1, which is about 33 full time equivalent members.
“On July 1, we’ll have 423 members representing 347.5 full time equivalent members.
“We have a shortage of about 82 full time members.”
Mr Hawkins said the ART was focused on reviewing cases which were more than three years old, slowing overall completions.
“In short, we were budgeted for effectively 60,000 finalisations and we’ve only got 90,000, so we’re always accumulating a 30,000 backlog,” he said.
Mr Hawkins welcomed a show of support from Senator Cash to progress regulations for the ART through the Senate, noting “the process”, including the types of notices needing to be given to applicants, was slowing decision-making.
Currently, 77,938 cases were awaiting a hearing, Mr Hawkins said.
To April 30, the ART finalised 18,717 migration application reviews, as well as 18,259 protection visas and more than 4600 social security decisions.
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