Derryn Hinch (Victoria, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party) Share this | Hansard source

If I had a media adviser, which I don't, and if I slavishly followed every bit of emailed political advice, which I don't, I guess there'd be some issues I wouldn't want to touch with a 40-foot barge pole, as my dad used to say. Some politicians would put same-sex marriage into that category, and now we have the $122 million postal plebiscite, the most expensive non-binding public opinion poll in Australian history—maybe in world history. There is another issue, though, that I guessed might cause angst in some circles in Australia, especially among people who don't believe in Australia giving foreign aid to anybody, anywhere, anytime. I guessed there would be some pushback; I just didn't think the jolt would come so quickly.

On the weekend, I put a couple of photos up on our Justice Party Facebook page. One showed a cute little girl in a Save the Children safe house in Lebanon. Also in the photo were a smiling Hinch and a young volunteer teacher in a headscarf. The other photo showed a young Syrian mother, with a baby boy in her arms, at a desolate, dust-ridden refugee camp near the Syrian border. There's that dirty word for some people: refugee. 'Not our problem; we've taken enough' et cetera et cetera. The post had only been up a few minutes before somebody posted:

That photo is a sure way of loosing supporters.

No judgement

Just a observation..

My reply was:

Sadly, you are probably right.

It is a reflection on 'charity begins at home', which it does and it should, but surely charity shouldn't end at home?

So, to find out how some of our charity funds—your taxpayer funds—are spent abroad, I joined a parliamentary group with Save the Children and went to Jordan and Lebanon during the parliamentary recess. It was partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Under armed guard and with suspiciously heavy, plated doors, we got within five kilometres of the Lebanon-Syria border. The area we were in is on the Australian government's official no-go list for tourists, but STC were keen to show us where Australian foreign aid for refugees is going in the Middle East, not only through Save the Children but also through other NGOs, like CARE, Plan, Caritas, Oxfam, the World Food Programme and, importantly, UNHCR.

We visited them all in a whirlwind week and saw the wonderful work that they are all doing, especially with vulnerable kids. Just to show you some of the complexities of Lebanese politics, on the outskirts of that border town, Hezbollah had just forced the surrender of militants formerly aligned with al-Qaeda. The Lebanese army had sat behind a line they'd drawn at a nearby disputed ancient road, while Hezbollah ran their own race, so to speak, even though Hezbollah is a supposedly banned foreign military force, which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the United States and by Australia. But there they were, successfully fighting a war on Lebanese soil.

To make it even more bewildering for foreigners, while we were in Beirut we learned of a recent and Machiavellian political coup. Hezbollah has now been brought into the strange coalition that makes up the formula that will supposedly lead to well-overdue elections over there. To further confuse you, after the al-Qaeda surrender Hezbollah allowed the militants safe passage to Syria in exchange for the return of some captured Lebanese soldiers. And we were told the Lebanese army was preparing its own assault on a few hundred Daesh militants holding border enclaves next to nearby towns. That thrust could, I suppose, finally rid Lebanon of IS-associated militant groups and perhaps enhance border security for the first time in yonks. Anyway, check Al Jazeera for the latest.

I detailed some of these experiences in my Senate Diary on Crikey. One lasting impression was a visit to a 'non-city' just outside of Amman in Jordan—a non-city of 80,000 Syrian refugees. Eighty thousand! We also visited an illegal settlement of 700 refugees north of Beirut, one of the 2,500 such camps in that beleaguered country. We were confronted by two countries with staggering humanitarian and economic problems that are trying to solve the chronic situations in different ways and neither really succeeding. Frankly, I doubt there is an answer, especially not in the foreseeable future.

We were confronted by two countries with staggering humanitarian problems, as I said. In Jordan, they have two massive refugee cities. They have 80,000 Syrian refugees in the well-planned and well-run camp we visited at Zaatari. It now covers 8.5 square kilometres and is divided into 12 distinct blocks. Another more primitive one has 55,000 refugees. In block 1, Jordan welcomed 2,000 refugees in 2012. Five years later, there are 80,000 residents. The border is now closed.

The authorities keep telling Jordanians it's not permanent. They even forbid the pouring of concrete in the camp. Families live in what they optimistically call 'caravans', but which are really dongas, shipping containers or primitive building site huts. The Jordanian government tells its resentful people it's all temporary. But there are power lines there, and the water pipes I saw being installed looked pretty permanent to me—and 'Hinch's hunch' is that this city, now one of Jordan's biggest, will still be here in 25 bleak years.

In Lebanon, they're still trying to learn from their previous 'Palestine problem', after they welcomed 400,000 Palestinians into the country years and years ago. They are all still there in one region. The government decided there would be no such camps for the Syrian refugees who fled across a porous border after the war started in 2011. These new refugees would be urbanised. The problem is there are now between one million and 1½ million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, and they make up 35 per cent of the population. Just think about that. Imagine if Australia suddenly had an influx of seven million refugees. That's the people-flood equivalent that Lebanon is trying to deal with. The unofficial camp I visited had 700 residents, most them young kids, and, as I said, there are 2,500 camps like that across the country. The authorities keep dismantling them and moving the refugees because local municipalities cannot cope. So the nomads then move on to a less inviting municipality and try to start again.

While we were in Lebanon, a fleet of trucks was driving around from municipality to municipality, trying to unload tonnes of solid waste. Imagine the sewage problems. I suspect that most of it goes into the supposedly pristine Mediterranean.

In both countries, there is this tangible resentment of the aid to refugees—resentment from poor Lebanese and Jordanians. In the hours of briefings we had from various NGO officials, they stressed how the new programs for refugees included the disadvantaged in host countries. Among the images I won't easily forget, one was in Beirut—two refugee families, one of 10 and one of six, living in two rooms without electricity and being charged US$500 a month for the privilege. They get some money for food and medicine. Adults and kids go out and work, usually illegally, for a small amount of money. The other was in Amman. A mother tells me how her five-year-old boy was killed by Assad's chemical warfare on his own people. She said, 'We didn't know what it was. The doctors didn't know what it was. It was like a spider web.'

In one town, I spent time with a bunch of refugees kids aged between nine and 16 in a Save the Children safe house. One case will haunt us, that of a nine-year-old, her innocent eyes emphasised by traditional Arabic kohl. She worked—illegally—sweeping up and cleaning at a hairdressing salon. Some kids as young as five worked. I thought, 'In her case, if the current practices prevail, she'll be married to an adult male within five years.' The refugee crisis has seen the percentage of child brides rocket in Jordan and Lebanon. Desperate families are sacrificing one daughter for the dowry, and it's also one less mouth for them to feed. In the crowded makeshift towns where there is no privacy, fathers are forcing their teenage daughters into arranged marriages to deter sexual harassment and supposedly save both her honour and the family's honour.

One final point is that I suspect a lot of people think all refugees are poor people. They end up that way, some from paying people smugglers. But we forget that these people were not always refugees. For example, the Syrians told me they had fled Raqqa and Mosul, and many had left middle-class homes with a car, a TV, air-conditioning, food, clothing, jobs and schooling. Now they have nothing. One man told me he'd been the local almond merchant. He'd had an orchard. He had some standing in his community. Now he has nothing: no possessions, no job, no stature and, increasingly, no self-esteem. And growing up behind him is a family who may get little or no education. So, if they are ever resettled, they are probably doomed to menial jobs and poverty, possibly for the rest of their lives. But, then, they're just refugees; it's not our problem, is it?