Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] My question is to the Prime Minister. I worked in Iraq as an adviser for Australia to coalition forces. After the United States began its withdrawal in 2007, one of our interpreters, Ali, was beheaded by al-Qaeda in Baghdad, his body dumped on the roadside. Prime Minister, how many of the Afghans who helped Australian defence forces will be left behind in Afghanistan?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian government will continue to do all within its power to ensure that we are able to bring out and continue to evacuate those Afghan nationals who have worked with Australians during the time of our service in Afghanistan, as we have been doing for the last eight years. Some 1,900 Afghans who have worked with Australians as part of our service there, and their families, have already been resettled in Australia. They are already living here; they are amongst us. We welcome them gratefully for their service together with Australian servicemen and women and for the many other roles they undertook. And, from April of this year, 430—before these most terrible events befell Afghanistan that have necessitated the evacuations that are now taking place—had already come to Australia, over those months, as we worked steadily, as we have done for many, many years.

Now, I thank the member for his service in Afghanistan, as we've acknowledged many members of this place who have performed many roles in Afghanistan—particularly those who've served in uniform. We thank them for their service, and we understand that. And that is why our government has continued, year upon year, going back to 2013, indeed, when I was minister for immigration; the number was in the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these visas we were able to process, to get those who were affected to Australia at that time. And that has continued. In fact, it was a matter that I was able to discuss with Prime Minister Johnson, only last week, who was pleased to learn how much Australia had been doing—particularly as a share of our population—compared to so many others who have been involved in that theatre.

So we will continue to expend every effort we possibly can, as we have been doing these many long years. It is not a simple task. It is not a task that can be done in the past, in a way that can overlook the many factors that Australians would expect us to undertake in bringing people to Australia from a place such as Afghanistan. But we have been about that job for many years. We have been getting people out. And we are getting people out right now—and not just those Afghans who've a visa to come to Australia, I hasten to add. We are also doing that for Afghan nationals who will be going to other places—to the United Kingdom, to New Zealand, or, potentially, to Canada—if they need that assistance, and we will continue to provide that support, as a coalition, as we work together to get as many people as we can from that desperate situation that suggests. But the government will continue to apply itself, as we have done, each and every year for these many years, and with the utmost of urgency.