Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Legislation Committee [Part 2], , 54:17 to 57:10
Presentation of updated statistics on the 79,400 unlawful non-citizens in Australia, categorized by their last held visa types.
Topics: National security, Public service staffing
Speakers: Senator David Shoebridge, Michael Thomas, Clare Sharp, Stephanie Foster, Unknown Speaker
my final series of questions are about what was asserted to be a crackdown on 77,700 unlawful non-citizens. This is a number the government continues to use. Can you please provide a breakdown of the visa status um of those 77,700
Senator, that number um is generally the number of people are using to refer to the number of unlawful non-citizens that are estimated to be in Australia. It's the figure from uh last I think what what's
>> 2025
>> 2025 and we do have an updated figure that we put into evidence earlier.
>> And what is I'm sorry I missed that. What was the figure?
>> So the 30th of June this year um the number of unlawful non-citizens in Australia is estimated at approximately 79,400.
And what are the categories of visas um that those 79,400 are on?
>> So Senator being unlawful [cough] [clears throat] um means they do not have a valid visa.
>> Well, in what circumstances have they ceased to have a visa?
>> So center the visa might have expired.
Well, could you provide a breakdown of you have a particular number 79,400 what their what their last valid visa was for each of those 79 for for the 79,400?
>> Okay, Senator, I can do that now for >> Um, so approximately 39,800 would last on a bridging visa. Approximately 21,700 would last on a visitor visa. Approximately 8,500 were last on a student visa. Approximately 3,500 were on a temporary resident visa. Approximately 800 were on a working holiday visa. 300 and sorry 4,700 were on other visas. But noting that the bridging visa could have been granted after a different substandard visa. This was the last visa
that they were. Could I could I ask you then in relation to the 39,800 bridging visas to provide what the last the breakdown of the last substantive visa
>> Senator, I'll take that on notice to see if we if we can do it. It might require [clears throat] manual assessment of every single one of those cases, which might not be possible, but I will take that on notice to see what is possible.
>> Yeah. Thank you, Mr. Thomas. And to be clear, if for some reason the systems are such and I would find it surprising, but if it's such that it involved you opening 39,800 matters, um please let us know because that would be unreasonable. But then it would also be evidence of a somewhat um unworkable database at your end. But
>> and it could have been several visas back as well. They might have been on several bridging visas.