416 Melbourne University Law Review [Vol 40:401 Statelessness 2014–24.79 In the absence of specific procedures to identify stateless persons, it is unclear how many people go ‘unnoticed and unidentified’.80 While statelessness itself is not an independent ground for being granted protection in Australia, it may be relevant (or even central) to a refugee or complementary protection claim. Thus, there is some data available about the numbers of people granted protection visas — as refugees or beneficiaries of complementary protection — who were also identified as being stateless.81 However, it must be emphasised that the lack of a coordinated or consistent approach to recording or monitoring numbers of stateless persons in Australia means that any available data is necessarily piecemeal and provides only part of the picture. For example, reliable statistics post-2012–13 are not available,82 and as such, the Tables below do not provide a full account of these issues in recent years. In addition, the deficiencies in the process for identifying stateless persons, outlined below, suggest further reasons why these figures are incomplete. However, we can discern that there has clearly been an increase in the number of stateless asylum seekers classified as ‘illegal maritime arrivals’ (‘IMAs’) seeking protection in Australia as indicated in Table 1. For example, in the 2012–13 period, 18 119 people arrived by sea and were screened into a 79 UNHCR, Global Action Plan, above n 35, 24, 7. 80 Batchelor, ‘The 1954 Convention’, above n 23, 40. 81 Department of Immigration and Border Protection (Cth), Asylum Trends: Australia — 2012–13 Annual Publication (2013). It defines a stateless person as ‘an individual who self identifies as stateless, who lacks identity as a national of a state for the purpose of law and is not entitled to the rights, benefits, or protection ordinarily available to a country’s nationals’: at 36. The Department’s most recent publication with regard to humanitarian arrivals to Australia does not provide any statistics or information in relation to stateless refugee populations in Australia: Department of Immigration and Border Protection (Cth), Australia’s Offshore Humanitarian Programme: 2013–14 (2014). 82 This is likely due in large part to the fact that processing of applications for protection visas was suspended from the Expert Panel’s report in 2012. While it has recently recommenced, the ‘fast track’ system is still in its early days. As at 31 January 2016, 28 705 asylum seekers were living in the community after being granted a Bridging Visa E: Department of Immigration and Border Protection (Cth)/Australian Border Force, Immigration Detention and Community Statistics Summary (31 January 2016) 4. There is no information publicly available as to the number of asylum seekers in this group that are stateless. As at 30 June 2015 there were approximately 2702 persons who the Department classified as stateless, who had been granted the Bridging Visa E: Australian Border Force, Illegal Maritime Arrivals on Bridging E Visas, June 2015 <http://www.border.gov.au/ReportsandPublications/Documents/ statistics/ima-bve-June-15.pdf>.