Figure 10: Average processing time for applications for Australian citizenship under s 21(8): All applicants compared to applications by ‘Unauthorised Maritime Arrivals’, 2015–2020 In summary, while the available statistics are not systematic, comprehensive or coherent they do reveal that stateless people are present in Australia in significant numbers. As outlined above and elsewhere in this Report, it is also unclear if those identified as ‘stateless’ in these various data sets have self-identified as stateless or been assigned this status, underscoring the unreliability and limited nature of this data and further highlighting the critical need for a transparent and uniform mechanism for identifying statelessness in Australia, such as an SDP. The statistics alone suggest real and significant protection gaps for stateless people in Australia, an observation that was borne out in depth in the doctrinal and qualitative research, to which we now turn. Understanding Statelessness in Australia | Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness 31