Sarah Hanson-Young (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Siewert I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes:

(i) the ongoing conflict in Syria, which has led to over 250 000 deaths, and the fleeing of 4 million refugees, over half of whom are children, and

(ii) Australia's ongoing military involvement in Syria and Iraq, the scale of which is second only to the United States of America; and

(b) calls on the Government to:

(i) increase the intake of refugees from the Syrian crisis,

(ii) support legislation passed in the Senate that would remove children and their families from detention, and

(iii) de-escalate Australia's military presence in Syria and Iraq, and explore political, economic and diplomatic avenues that will work toward a peaceful settlement to the conflict.

My interest in this particular topic is the humanitarian impact, particularly the Syrian conflict. We know that this has been a long stretched civil war inside Syria. It has been going on for over five years. It was 18 months ago, in January 2014, when I first visited the Jordan refugee camp—one of the world's largest refugee camps now—the Zaatari refugee camp. I also visited the various refugee settlements in Lebanon. Of course, both Jordan and Lebanon are bordering countries to Syria and have had to cop the bulk of the very real human need of people who have been fleeing this conflict.

When I was in the Jordan camp walking around and talking to the UNHCR—that is, of course, the UN refugee agency experts—they explained to me that, when they first established the camp, it had been believed that it would only need to cater for 20,000 people and perhaps for six to 12 months maximum. Five years on that is just not the case. It is now one of the world's largest refugee camps. There are over 300,000 refugees in that camp, and many of the people who are there have been there for four or five years. We have heard direct appeals from the UN in relation to a lack of resources and to fund these operations properly. We know that various things such as food vouchers have had to be rationed because they simply do not have the resources to ensure that everybody who is in the organised camp has access to food on a regular basis. That is one of the reasons cited for why people are continuing to move on.

While there might be 300,000 people in the formal camp in Jordan, there are over a million in the Jordanian community. According to the ambassador from Lebanon and the briefing that was given by the Jordanian, the Turkish and the Lebanese ambassadors in this place only two weeks ago, there is now a situation in Lebanon. The population of refugees in Lebanon makes up 40 per cent of the total population inside Lebanon. That is more than one in three people in Lebanon now seeking asylum as refugees.

The biggest concern of all in this is that this is a children's crisis. Out of what is believed to now be four million people who have fled Syria as refugees there are another seven million people internally displaced inside Syria. Out of the four million people who have fled across the border more than half of those are children. It is a horrific situation that we have children—many of them very young children—living in very delicate and unsafe conditions, particularly in those countries bordering Syria.

It is to that point that there is a continued growth of people moving from those bordering countries because they simply cannot put their lives back together. They do not have the resources. The UN bodies and the various partner agencies do not have the ability to help cater for the four million people living in the bordering countries. So people continue to move and that is what we are seeing in terms of the influx of people seeking protection throughout Europe. Just because they got out of Syria has not meant that these children and their families are necessarily safe, or, indeed, that they have any ability to put their lives back together.

It was only two months ago when the world was shocked and heartbroken by the image of the little boy whose body washed up on the coast in Turkey, little Aylan. It was that image which really brought home to so many of us, right around the world, that those who are copping the brunt of this conflict in Syria, those who are suffering the most are indeed the most vulnerable—that is, the children. As the world was shocked and shaken into action, countries right around the globe were saying, through grief and through the human response of wanting to help, that more needs to be done to offer humanitarian assistance to the hundreds of thousands, the millions of people who have had to flee Syria. It is incredibly heart warming and wonderful to see that our own Australian community stood up and demanded that we, too, as far away as we are from the Syrian crisis, take some responsibility in helping to give shelter and protection to those in need. That was, of course, despite the initial position of the government under former Prime Minister Tony Abbott that Australia did not need to do any more. That was the original position: Australia had already done enough and we did not need to help any more. Thankfully, sanity prevailed and the heart of the nation forced the Prime Minister's hand at the time. Then we saw the extension of our humanitarian program to take an extra 12,000 Syrian refugees. I think that is a very proud achievement of the Australian community—to ensure that, despite the initial opposition, we were able to offer this humanitarian assistance.

To this date, however, one of the biggest issues facing the humanitarian organisations, who are trying all they can to manage this humanitarian crisis and children's crisis, is a lack of funding and support. It shocks me, to be honest, that here in Australia we spend more than double the amount of money running Australia's detention system, in our offshore camps and in our onshore detention centres, than the UN Refugee Agency has to help those who are fleeing war in Syria. The statistics are very stark. The UN budget for helping Syrian refugees is just under a billion dollars at US$931 million and Australia spends $2.1 billion locking up refugees. I find it incredibly galling to hear in this place that Australia is doing everything we can, that we are more generous than any other nation. It is simply not true. I would like it to be true. I would like to think that the generosity and warm hearts of Australians is extended into this parliament and that we had a government that spent our money more wisely. Imagine what we could do to help the very real humanitarian needs of those fleeing the war in Syria if we were not spending $2.1 billion locking up the very same people in Australia and in our offshore detention camps.

The UN has appealed directly to Australia many times for us to pledge more money to help in this crisis. Our fair share, if we were to be picky about it, if we were to only do our fair share in comparison to other countries, not going above and beyond, would be, as cited by the United Nations, $150 million this year. We have not come anywhere near that. We gave very little to the UN in previous years to deal with the humanitarian crisis from the Syrian conflict and now we have pledged $44 million, when in fact our bare minimum fair share would be $150 million. So we are still a long way behind.

I appeal to the government directly today. I think we can be doing much more. I think we could easily find a way. If we released children from detention here in Australia, perhaps we could spend $150 million helping to feed Syrian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey refugee settlements, so that people do not have to continue to flee. We know that offering direct humanitarian assistance through resettlement is important. It is important symbolically. It tells the rest of the world that Australia is prepared to be part of our global community, that we share the burden of ensuring that people are given safety. It is an incredibly important thing to do. The 12,000 people who will be given protection here are going to become wonderful Australian citizens. They will get jobs. Their kids will go to school. They money will be spent in our local communities and they will be forever grateful for being given a chance to live in safety and an opportunity to rebuild their lives. I think we could be offering more people that opportunity.

I appeal to the government: let us use the current 12,000 increase as a down payment and, in fact, let us take many more people than that. We have the ability to. We have one of the strongest screening programs in the world for refugees. We know and can trust our systems. We know who people are when they come to Australia, and we are able to ensure community safety. We can do all of that, and we can offer more assistance to people who are in great need. Offering up the money the humanitarian organisations need on the ground is vital. Opening our hearts and our doors to those who are in need now is doable. We are strong enough as a nation to do this; we have proven that already. We should continue it.

To that point I would like to note that I know there are some people in this parliament—Senator Cory Bernardi is one of them, but there are members in the other place as well—who in recent days have suggested that we should 'close the borders'; that we should not take even the 12,000 Syrian refugees we have pledged to help. They can have their opinions, of course, but I am very thankful that the Australian community has shown far more grace and far more compassion than those few here in this place who advocate the benefits of fear as opposed to the benefits of human kindness and compassion. We can take in more people. We should be helping to fund the agencies better. But we also need to have a look at what we are doing in our own backyard. It puzzles many Australians that we have a program to welcome more refugees who are having to flee the Syrian crisis while at the same time we are leaving Syrian and Iraqi refugees locked up in detention. It does not make any sense. We already know who these people are—they are legitimate refugees. They deserve protection, and just because they happen to make their own way out does not diminish their need for safety or their need for dignity and respect from our policies.

I was incredibly heartbroken when I heard the story of one Syrian refugee who is currently in detention here in Australia. The rest of his family is hiding in a rubbled town in Syria as we speak. His two young daughters, who are under the age of six, and his wife are effectively trapped in their home. They are too afraid to go out because of the bombings, and they are obviously frightened of the rise in extremism and violence that is ripping their country to pieces. Meanwhile we have the father locked up in an Australian detention centre and every day we are spending money on his detention—it costs $2,000 per day to keep someone locked up on Manus and Nauru. We are spending money to keep him locked up and separated from his family when what we could be doing is helping to safely reunite his family with him in Australia. The fact that we have these two parallel positions from the government, two parallel policies that work against each other, is madness. It does not make sense at all. Australians are puzzled as to why we would be spending money locking up Syrian refugees in Australia at the same time as we are saying that we care and that we understand that people fleeing Syria need protection because they cannot just go home. This man's case is a good example, but there are also many others who have come here—Iraqis and Syrians who are being kept separated from their families because they happened to arrive on a boat rather than been hand-picked by the immigration minister and the department. We need to see the end of this ludicrous situation.

The last point of this motion goes to the issue of the amount of money Australia is spending to lock up children in our detention centres. How do we advocate on a global stage that Australia is willing to participate in a humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis when we have a system that spends money locking up children who have done nothing wrong, but are victims of the circumstances they were born into, the country they were born into or the nationality of their parents? There are 112 kids who are locked behind bars here in Australia. It is time we did something about letting them out, and I hope we could see them out in time for Christmas.