Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I also wish to associate myself with the remarks of the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Sydney in respect of the condolence motion.

As I was saying earlier, at the moment up to five million Syrians are now refugees and over 10 million need humanitarian support. The suffering of people displaced by violence in Syria cannot be ignored by the world community, and that is why it is important that this parliament debate this issue and express a view regarding Australia's commitments to easing the suffering, particularly of those who have been displaced by this terrible ongoing conflict.

A humanitarian response and a longer-term political solution to the crisis must be supported by the international community, including Australia. We are a prosperous and generous nation. We are a wealthy nation, comparatively speaking, in terms of our real incomes, and we must do our best, our utmost, to play a part in this unfolding crisis.

As the motion states, the masses of Syrian refugees have put an enormous pressure on neighbouring countries, particularly Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, with Syrian refugees in Lebanon constituting an astounding one-third of that country's population. There are four million people who live in Lebanon, and an additional one million refugees from Syria have fled over the border and are now in camps on the outskirts of Lebanon. Can you imagine a million people over a series of months coming into Sydney and having to be clothed, fed, sheltered and provided with basic health care? In light of this the government must substantially increase Australia's contribution to the United Nations and relief organisations delivering humanitarian assistance to people affected by violence in Syria. This should include increased support to UN agencies operating in neighbouring countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. It includes food, schooling and health facilities. Australia can play a role in providing this humanitarian assistance.

In December 2013, the UN issued its largest appeal in relation to a single crisis, stating that $6.5 billion was vital to adequately support Syrians inside and out of the conflict-ravaged nation. To date Australia has offered $35 million. It is not enough. When the Labor government was in office, we dedicated $100 million. That amount of funding has been cut. Based on the size of our economy and Oxfam's calculations, if we were to pay our fair share, if we were to uphold the fair go, our contributions should be in the vicinity of $117 million. The Abbott government must recommit to receiving more refugees from an expanded quota from Syria also.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on this motion and I join the comments of the members for Fowler, Fremantle, Kingsford Smith, Berowra and Brisbane.

When we think of Syria and the situation on the ground today, perhaps the place to go back and start is December 2010, the start of the then so-called Arab Spring, where there was so much hope that countries in the Middle East, that had been ruled by dictators for decades, would finally have democratic governments, would finally have governments where all people, regardless of their religion, would have opportunity. But we look today, four years on from the start of the Arab Spring, and we see the situation has actually gone from bad to worse. Almost in every country there have been humanitarian and economic disasters. If you look at the case of Syria, even since this motion was tabled the figures and statistics have gotten worse. Only last week, a humanitarian organisation in Syria, Al-Marsad, reported that there have been 210,000 people killed since the war broke out in 2011. Additionally to that, two million people have been injured, and 1.5 million have been left disabled in some way. For children, they quote the number of 10,664 killed, and 6,783 for women.

Also, foreign fighters are attracted to the country. Almost 25,000 non-Syrians have been killed in the civil war, including 640 belonging to Hezbollah. Our lessons to be learnt from this humanitarian tragedy include how fragile democracy is and how difficult it is to take root. Countries cannot just go from dictator to a democracy overnight. That is through the history of almost every democratic nation throughout the world, even our own country Australia. Before we became the Australian nation at the turn of the previous century, we had the benefit of a hundred years of British colonial rule to establish those roots and those institutions embedded in our society that enabled our democracy to thrive, prosper and grow. So to think that these democratic roots could establish in the Middle East almost overnight and that those countries could become peaceful was folly of the highest extent.

One of the great tragedies that has happened in Syria is what is happening to their Christian population. We know that before the war they were something like 10 per cent of the Syrian population, but on some figures almost 700,000 Christians have left that country—some 40 per cent of the pre-war number. I would also like to add that I have some grave reservations about some of the policies of the United States in relation to Syria. The idea of arming or financing the so-called moderate rebels is a policy that needs serious questioning and serious thinking through, for arming so-called moderates can often only be seen as throwing petrol onto the fire.

The Australian government has not been still in this. So far we have provided almost $70 million in response to the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East since 2014. We have contributed $135 million into humanitarian assistance in response to the Syrian crisis since this conflict began. That includes a total of $35 million in 2014. We have also provided funding for food, water, shelter, protection, medical assistance and education inside Syria, and over the next three years Australia will resettle 4,500 refugees. We can do what we can, but ultimately this humanitarian disaster must be solved by the Syrian people.

Debate adjourned.