Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It's been five weeks since this parliament last sat. This period must have seemed like an eternity to around 600 men on Manus Island—men who asked us for help and are entitled to just that. But what's our government done? In the face of warnings from the UNHCR about a looming humanitarian catastrophe in the lead-up to the closure of the facility on Manus Island on 31 October, the government did nothing. We saw a profound failure of leadership—moral and practical—and we have seen the humanitarian crisis that we were warned about.

I stand here in this parliament to say to those men that we are aware of their suffering, and we will do what we can to alleviate it. In particular, I join the shadow minister in calling on the government to stop sitting on its hands and to, at the very least, accept the generous offer of New Zealand to resettle some of these men to protect them from harm. I call more broadly on government members to pay attention to our moral and our legal obligations to those who seek help from us—those who are forced to flee their homes and are entitled to ask us for help. I call the government to join us in forming a more decent debate about these most challenging issues, to do justice to these men and to those elsewhere in the region who also are entitled to more from us.