Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) according to the UNHCR, the number of displaced people fleeing from war, conflict or persecution is the highest since World War II, and includes around half a million refugees and asylum seekers in South East Asia;

(b) the increase in the number of people seeking asylum in recent years and the decrease in the number of third country resettlement places being offered in 2017 means that refugees face waiting more than a decade before they are able to safely restart their lives;

(c) during the Leaders' Summit on Refugees and Migrants at the United Nations in New York City in 2016, the Canadian Government, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and the Open Society Foundations launched a joint initiative to increase the private sponsorship of refugee resettlement around the world;

(d) since the late 1970s, the Canadian Government has facilitated the resettlement of more than 275,000 refugees through private sponsorship by individuals, community groups and private sector organisations; and

(e) the previous Australian Government initiated a community sponsorship program in Australia in 2012 and the current Australian Government committed to making this program permanent during the Leaders' Summit on Refugees and Migrants; and

(2) calls on Australian governments, businesses and community organisations to explore ways to use private sponsorship to expand the resettlement of refugees in Australia through formal channels.

The international refugee crisis is the defining humanitarian issue of our time. It is a challenge that Australia has all too often failed to rise to. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, there are currently around 65 million displaced people around the world fleeing from war, conflict and persecution—the most since World War II. There are around half a million refugees and many more displaced people in our own region. It is not an easy issue from a policy or a moral perspective.

The problem raises difficult choices with uncertain consequences. People of good faith can and will disagree about the best role Australia can play in response to this humanitarian crisis. While it may not often feel like it in the day-to-day political clamour, there are areas of agreement within the community, civil society and even this parliament about the role that Australia should play. I believe that we can build out from these areas of consensus in this country to increase the positive impact that Australia can have on the international refugee crisis. In this vein, I want to thank the member for Mallee for agreeing to second this motion, and the member for McMillan for agreeing to speak on it today.

One area of consensus on this issue is the importance of humanitarian resettlement of refugees formally registered with the UNHCR to Australia. The importance of resettlement has grown significantly in recent times, as the total number of refugees for whom third country resettlement is the only possible durable solution has increased dramatically, while at the same time the total number of third country resettlement places is set to fall significantly as a result of the Trump administration's decision to cut the total number of people that the United States settles by more than half, from 110,000 per year to a maximum of 50,000. I recently travelled through Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Myanmar—with Save the Children, but at my own expense—to learn more about the refugee experience in our region. I heard over and over again during that trip what impact these trends have had on the pathways confronting people seeking asylum. A 10-year wait for a durable solution is not unusual, and the less vulnerable amongst these people—men without families, without women and children—can expect a much longer wait.

Australia's humanitarian resettlement quota has fluctuated in recent years. It is encouraging to see it begin to increase again, after the Abbott government's decision to reduce the humanitarian program to 13,750 in 2014. Labor's policy at the last election proposed increasing the humanitarian program to 27,000 a year. I note that the Turnbull government has proposed increasing the humanitarian program to 16,250 visas in 2017-18 and 18,750 visas in 2018-19. However, both sides of politics recognise that there is a cost to the Commonwealth budget of increasing the quota in this way.

Australia invests substantially in arrivals under the humanitarian program, both in visa processing costs and in settlement services, and this is appropriate. Increasing the humanitarian program through these channels would cost the Commonwealth budget hundreds of millions of dollars. In contrast, community or private sponsorship of the resettlement of refugees in Australia offers an alternative pathway to resettlement that offers the potential to avoid this constraint. Community or private sponsorship programs allow non-government actors—businesses, religious organisations, community groups and individuals—to meet the costs of visa applications and resettlement services for refugees, either via direct financial contributions or the provision of in-kind goods and services.

The Gillard government initiated a community sponsorship pilot in Australia, capped at 500 places in 2012. While imperfectly designed, the department of immigration concluded that it 'could provide an additional resettlement pathway'. In September 2016 the Turnbull government committed to making the program permanent and increasing the intake to 1,000 within the existing refugee resettlement quota, as part of then President Obama's refugee summit in New York.

We do need to exercise care in this regard. Community sponsorship should not be used as a substitute for government sponsorship. This would introduce discrimination in favour of refugees with connections to those with means relative to those without in our humanitarian program. However, this pathway to resettlement that Australia has taken tentative steps down in recent years holds great potential for expanding resettlement through formal channels. Indeed, Canada has had a private sponsorship of refugees program since 1978, which has resettled well over 200,000 refugees over and above those resettled with government funding.

During the United Nations Summit for Refugees and Migrants in New York last year, the UNHCR, the government of Canada and the Open Society Foundations launched a joint initiative to increase private sponsorship of refugees around the world. In this regard, I call on Australian civil society to join in this international effort to seek to build consensus across the political spectrum and across the business and community sectors for the use of community private sponsorship to expand the resettlement of refugees in Australia through formal channels. Perhaps the Australian community can do a better job at this task than those of us in this parliament.

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