Richard Di Natale (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in support of the four million people who are now fleeing the war in Syria, two million of whom are children. These are not people who are seeking a better life; these are people who are running for their life. If you look at the global context here, what you find is that we are at an unprecedented time in human history where the number of displaced people has reached almost 60 million. Now almost one in 100 people across the planet are either refugees, internally displaced or seeking asylum. And what we see in response to that here in Australia is that our humanitarian impact has been static, it has not changed, it has not responded to what is, in the words of many experts, a paradigm shift in terms of the global displacement of people.

And one of the biggest drivers of that global displacement is the war in Syria. We have four million people registered with the UNHCR who are fleeing for their lives—they are refugees—and that ignores the eight million people who are internally displaced in Syria. On the border of Syria we have Lebanon, which has a population of close to four million people, one million of whom are refugees, many fleeing from Syria. One cannot forget the tragic human stories such as the body of that young child dragged out of the water who has become the human face of the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe.

How should Australia respond? What does a decent, welcoming, strong country do in response to an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe? Do we turn our backs, or do we respond with decency and compassion? The Greens say, 'Let us respond with decency and compassion.' That is why we have called for an immediate intake of 20,000 Syrian refugees over and above the existing humanitarian aid program. Twenty thousand refugees are only a drop in the ocean, as some have said and doing nothing in the global context—as others have said. But making a material difference to the lives of 20,000 people—that, in and of itself, should be enough.

But it is not just that increase in 20,000 refugees that the Greens have called for. We have also said that there has to be an immediate injection of funds to the UNHCR so that they can do their job of processing people and help them to seek refuge in other countries, given the circumstances in Syria. And yet what has been the response of this government? Not one additional place to that already committed. Not one additional refugee settled in Australia. The announcement from the Abbott government that it would increase its humanitarian program last year to 18,000 is set in stone. And in the face of this unfolding catastrophe they have not committed one additional place.

But worse than that: their response in the face of the Assad regime, which is the primary driver of what is happening in Syria, is, 'We will drop bombs from a distance on the people of Syria,' targeting IS and completely ignoring what the underlying driver of that conflict is—and that is the Assad regime. How on earth, when faced with the tragedy that the world is now confronting, can we have a country like Germany saying, 'We welcome you. We'll look after you. We'll provide you with protection.' and have an Australian government that says, 'We will bomb you. From a distance we will—like the coward that is this Prime Minister—drop bombs on you, and we will ignore the plight of those people who need our assistance—