Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have had surges and drops in the number of people coming to Australia by boat for as long as we can remember. We had a surge in the 1970s with the Vietnamese, we had a surge in the 1980s, and then it dropped again. Then we had a surge in the 1990s, when there was a war in Iraq and people fleeing the Taliban, and then we had a drop again. We have a surge again now because of conflict in Afghanistan and Sri Lanka. The key thing that drives people fleeing to somewhere is that they are fleeing from somewhere. When there is a war, people flee; when peace breaks out, they stop fleeing. So when war breaks out there is a surge in people moving around the world. There is a surge in people moving around the world everywhere, by the way—it is not just here. This notion that the 45 million displaced people in the world are all looking to come to Australia is just not accurate. As I said, of 2,500 people who qualify as refugees, one seeks to come to Australia by boat in our heaviest year.

Imagine if we hosted the number that Pakistan hosts: 1.8 million refugees fled across the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan—1.8 million. Now that is a refugee problem. Mind you, it is a bigger problem for the refugees who have lost their families and their homes and are living with grief and unbearable loss and sometimes physical trauma as well. Syria has 1.1 million Iraqi refugees, making it the second largest refugee-hosting country in the world. Iran has 980,000 and there have been times when Iran has hosted over three million Afghanis. Jordan has 500,000, Chad 330,000, and Tanzania 321,000, and 320,000 refugees flocked across Kenya’s border. The load from hosting these refugees, and again members opposite know this as well as we do, is overwhelmingly carried by developing nations—not by Australia by any means but by developing countries, who hosted nearly 80 per cent of the global refugee population last year. Forty-nine of the least developed countries in the world host nearly one-fifth of the world’s refugees.

We play a very important role as one of about a dozen countries that accept refugees from Third World countries, and it is in the nation’s interest and in our best behaviour to ensure that the Australian people understand and respect the value of that refugee program. The behaviour today and these motions that stir up fear, suspicion and hate do not serve our interests well.

See this speech in context