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

Maybe I see the world in very simple terms here. We hear a lot from both sides of this House on the word 'compromise'. I point out to the member for Kooyong that, just as he does not support the Malaysia solution, I do not support Nauru either. I will find walking into this chamber and voting for Nauru to be quite a terrible thing to do, but I am going to do it because I think that finding an answer in this House, with both sides compromising, gives us the least worst option we can find. There is not a good option here. When war breaks out and people flee in fear of their lives, there are no good options anymore except peace. We cannot bring other countries peace in this House, but what we can do is find a way to play our part to help in this global problem of huge proportions.

There are an estimated 15 million asylum seekers in the world today who have already been processed by the UNHCR and another 25 million or so displaced people that we know of. I see figures that put it at 100 million more than that. We are talking massive numbers. Of the 15 million registered refugees, one per cent gets resettled in third countries—just one per cent or one in 100. So if there was this mythical queue that people talk about, it would be 100 years long. We know that the queue actually moves around—as new places of conflict arise, the queue moves—but, if there were a queue, it would be 100 years long.

It is that long because there are very few countries in the world which can take people from third countries. We, Australia, are one of 12 countries who can do so. The US takes about 100,000, Canada and Australia take about 15,000 from third countries, and then there are another nine countries that take anything between a couple of hundred and 1,200. So there are three significant contributors to taking people from camps, where people sometimes stay for 15 to 20 years. That is the major role that Australia plays in the refugee dilemma around the world.

We are one of the few countries who can do it, and we can do it because we do not share a border with a conflict zone. If we were Pakistan and we had 1.8 million Afghanis crossing our border, we would not be talking about permanent refugee status; we would be talking about housing people for the short term. If we were Malaysia, with 270,000 asylum seekers in their borders, we would not be talking about taking people from third countries. But we can. The reason I support the Malaysia deal and will vote for Nauru as well is that I think that role we play in taking people from third countries is incredibly important. It is a role that we should take very seriously, and we should grow. As long as the Australian people start to worry that our refugee policy may not be taking the people that are most in need, and as long as the Australian people start to lose faith in our refugee policy because of people arriving by boats and the incredible attention on it, we lose that capacity to grow that very important part of our program, which is the taking of refugees from third countries through the UNHCR. For that reason—with, I have to say, great difficulty—I will support the Malaysia deal, and I will walk into this House and vote for a bill which also reinstates Nauru.

I would take the opposition's commitment to international conventions more seriously if they could explain to me why it is not okay to send people back to Malaysia for processing through the UNHCR, because Malaysia is not a signatory to the refugee convention, but it is okay to turn a boat back to Indonesia, which is also not a signatory to the refugee convention. The contradiction there is quite profound: it is not okay to send people back to Malaysia for processing through the UNHCR, but it is okay to turn a boat around and tow it back to Indonesia for whatever purpose, presumably not processing through the UNHCR, even though both countries have the same position in relation to the refugee treaty. Again I would ask the coalition to acknowledge that we on this side are really compromising on this. This is a genuine compromise for me. I would ask you to do the same. (Time expired)

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