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

In 2009 we received 6,170 applications, which is 1.6 per cent of the 370,000 applications received across the industrialised nations. We were ranked 16th and 21st overall.

There are some great myths about how policy influences the number of boat arrivals, and the minister dealt with some of them. But the last time that Afghanistan was at the top of the list of refugee source countries was in 2001, when we also had a surge here. Afghans lodged asylum claims in 39 of the 44 industrialised countries last year. It is incredibly common. Worldwide there were 380,000 asylum claims lodged in industrialised countries. The United States received 50,000 applications, Canada 30,000, the European Union 250,000, and France over 40,000 asylum claims. The UK and Germany had 30,000 claims each. Other EU countries received more than 10,000 asylum claims each and Australia received 6,000 claims. The increase in the number of claims occurred all around the world. Virtually every industrialised country had an increase in claims in the same way that Australia did. It is just common sense. People flee to somewhere when they flee from somewhere, and they flee to other industrialised countries in far, far greater numbers than they flee to Australia. Again I would like to remind the House that we generally agree on the numbers of refugees that we should be accepting and that we are today talking about some of the most disadvantaged and broken people that you can imagine, and I would ask us to respect that. (Time expired)

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