Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Hansard source

Often when you are in parliament you do feel as though it is groundhog day. The tragedy of this debate is that it is groundhog day. It is not a tragedy—it is saddening and in some respects sickening—that again the opposition has to demonise human beings to score cheap political points. They talk about illegal boat arrivals. The Parliamentary Library has put out a fact sheet about asylum seekers and refugees. They called it ‘What are the facts?’ Yet again, we are not getting the facts. We are getting hysteria and dog whistling. Listen for the whistle; you can hear it.

Are we, in parliament, followers or leaders? Do we follow the public or do we lead them? Should we have debates on the reality of the situation and ask the public to look at things in the light of day and come with us or should we descend into talkback radio farce and go as followers? I say that we should be leaders. The member for Stirling said that we should be leaders. He said that there is a lack of a direction and an agenda. I would say that about the opposition. What is their direction? Where is their agenda? They should talk about that instead of beating up on these people who are seeking asylum on our shores.

We have to remember who we are talking about. Let us look at the UN convention definition of a refugee. It reads:

… owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.

That is who we are talking about. We are not just talking about boats coming here; we are talking about the people in the boats who come here seeking asylum on our shore. Surely we can raise the level of the debate. The member for Cook demonised the current Minister for Immigration and Citizenship and the previous minister for attempting to be leaders in this debate and not just followers.

The Parliamentary Library’s fact sheet—which they have had to go and produce to take some of the hysteria out of this debate—says:

The magnitude and complexity of the issues arising from the flow of asylum seekers and refugees globally poses huge challenges for the world’s destination countries, including Australia. These countries universally struggle to maintain a balance between controlling national borders and offering protection to millions of displaced people.

When the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was established in 1951, there were approximately 1.5 million refugees internationally. At the end of 2008 there were an estimated 42 million forcibly displaced people worldwide, including 15.2 million refugees, 827 000 asylum seekers and 26 million internally displaced persons (IDPs). It is estimated that there were an additional 25 million people displaced due to natural disasters.

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Australia has a long history of accepting refugees for resettlement and over 700 000 refugees and displaced persons, including thousands during and immediately after World War II, have settled in Australia since 1945.

We need to put in perspective the burden that we are accepting. It seems like there is this mass coming to our shores, which is just not the case. Let us talk about the facts, not the hysteria. Let us be leaders, not followers.

The number of arrivals to Australia remains low by world standards. The overwhelming majority of asylum seekers still head towards Europe or North America. Worldwide, about 380,000 asylum claims were lodged during 2009. These claims were made in 20 settlement countries. So we have an enormous mass of people, and only 20 countries taking them. The United States was the largest single recipient of asylum claims. It received nearly 50,000. Canada received over 30,000. The European Union received about 250,000 asylum claims in 2009, with France receiving 40,000 and the UK and Germany receiving 30,000. Eight other EU countries received more than 10,000 asylum claims. By way of comparison, Australia received about 6,000 claims. Let us put this into perspective; let us talk about the reality. Let us be leaders, not followers.

Let us look at where the majority of these people come from and how they arrive here. They arrive on planes. The majority of these people arrive on planes. We are talking about this nation of our borders being overrun.

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