Senator CASH ( Western Australia ) ( 14:5 9 ): 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?