Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Razia is a citizen from my electorate. She's lovely and kind. She and her husband fled the Taliban 14 years ago. Her sister and mother are alone in Kabul, unable to even leave the house now and get food. The Taliban are back, driving around their district looking for women. Razia's mum and sister are only in Afghanistan as they've been waiting over four years for the Morrison government to process their visas. Abdul is an Australian citizen from my electorate. He's in Kabul with his pregnant wife and his two-year-old Australian child. He's only in Afghanistan because he's been waiting for three years for the Morrison government to process his wife's visa. I shamed the government into granting his visa last week. Abdul then emailed me photos of his bruises, after he was beaten trying to get to the airport. They'll keep trying.

There are thousands of cases like this. No words are adequate to describe the helplessness, the trauma and the despair which Australians with a connection to Afghanistan feel about the return of the Taliban. My community has more Afghan Australians than any other in this parliament. They talk to me about phone calls hourly to their wives, daughters, sons, sisters, mothers, brothers—crying, knowing that every call may be the last. What can you possibly say to Hasan from Narre Warren, an Australian citizen, with his daughters and his wife stranded in Kabul—they have also been waiting for years for their visas to be processed and are now facing, in their own words, 'a fate worse than death'. Thousands of Australians and their families should have been out of Afghanistan years ago. They're only there because they've been waiting for this miserable, nasty government to process their visas: a government whose tardiness is matched only by its malice.

The Morrison government has been running a blatantly discriminatory visa program for years. If your husband or wife is from Afghanistan, it takes on average 43 months for them to get their visa; from America or Western Europe, seven to nine months. This is not due to national security. It's a result of deliberate, systemic, effectively racist discrimination in the visa program, which started when this Prime Minister was the immigration minister. And the consequences are now clear. My community tells me that Australians and their loved ones will now pay with their lives. I hope it's not too late to save many thousands more, but there can be no doubt about this Prime Minister's culpability. He will never be able to look these Australians in the eye. He must go to his own grave bearing the shame and the stain of these deaths.

The negligence of this government in abandoning interpreters and others who helped us is also clear. Last week the PM said:

… despite our best efforts, I know that support won't reach all that it should. … We wish it were different.

Well, it could have been different and it should have been different. The government was warned for years about the risks of these delays, and no amount of prime ministerial spin and marketing and blame-shifting can cover up his government's moral failure to issue the visas and bring these people to safety. Nor can it account for his own moral failure and his tone-deaf response to this crisis—his nonsensical position that refugees safe here won't be sent back to Afghanistan, but they can't stay permanently. When, exactly, does he think it will be safe for the Hazara people, or women, or anyone else to return to live under the Taliban? Afghan Australians have been in this country since 1860. Now is the moment for urgent, national generosity, but, as always with this failed Prime Minister, it's too little, too late. From an abject lack of preparation for the worst bushfires to the failure to build a safe quarantine system, from being stingy and slow in securing enough vaccines to dragging his feet on economic support for his lockdowns, and now his lethal negligence in Afghanistan, this Prime Minister is always too little, too late, always refusing to take responsibility.

Afghanistan was this country's longest war, costing 41 Australian lives, 261 ADF casualties and billions of dollars. It's a debate for another time: What was it all for? What went right? What went wrong? What lessons must be learnt for the future? But it cannot just pass with a prime ministerial shrug of the shoulders: 'We wish it were different.' The focus right now has to be, urgently, on cleaning up the government's mess as best we can. But I call on the government to commit to a full and transparent public inquiry, on the whole 20 years but particularly on the failure of the last few weeks and the failure of the visa program for years, risking the lives of Australians and their loved ones.