Tony Sheldon (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

[by video link] The Prime Minister has described Afghanistan as a failed state and is trying to shrug off all responsibility for the countless Afghan citizens who had come to believe Australia would do the right thing by them. Well, right now we are doing the absolute wrong thing by them; and the only failure is in this government's duty of care to the people of Afghanistan, who stood beside Australian forces for two decades. Any Afghan person who has worked with the Australians during the past 20 years now knows that they are likely to become the plaything of a resurgent Taliban. Ethnic Hazaras in particular note that they are in grave danger. Their lives and livelihoods are under direct threat. Many of them have family in Australia. The 2016 census noted that there were nearly 47,000 Afghanistan-born people here. These are real people who are watching their loved ones in Afghanistan face persecution and worse.

Today I spoke to Jamila Gherjestani, an ethnic Hazari woman who is a lawyer, trade unionist and proud Australian, as well as a friend and colleague. Jamila said that the entire Afghan community is horrified both at what has happened in Afghanistan and at what the Morrison government is not doing about it. 'Why were no plans put in place?' she asked me. 'Australia knew this was going to happen.' Jamila went on to say: 'I have cousins in Afghanistan who can no longer go to school and to work. They cannot even leave the house. Women who had jobs in offices are now being told to have their male relatives replace them.' She said, further: 'Afghanistan was not a failed state like Morrison says. It was doing well. Women were doctors. Women were in parliament.' She said she also fears for relatives here existing on temporary protection visas, who now are frightened they'll be sent back to Afghanistan. What a horrific approach by this government; how heartless! It has been reported that there are more than 4,000 Afghan refugees in Australia with temporary protection visas.

Jamila said her young nephew in Australia watched the horrifying spectacle last week of desperate Afghan people clinging to the undercarriage of a US military air transport as it took off, some of them eventually falling to their deaths. He said to Jamila: 'How come the world doesn't care about our people? It's not only distressing to me and my mum and to the adults here, but also to the kids, knowing their cousins are being treated like this.' Jamila is outraged at the Morrison government's dog-whistling about not letting in 'terrorists' and saying that not much can be done for a country that won't help itself. Jamila's apt response: 'Why was it good enough for them to be guarding the Australian embassy with machine guns for 20 years but now you say they're terrorists? It is extremely disrespectful and it makes us angry. You trusted them for 20 years to work with you.'

Jamila arrived in Australia with other family members in 1997, aged seven, as a refugee, after her father was slaughtered by the mujahedin in Afghanistan. Before she was 15 years old, she had a job flipping burgers at McDonald's. When she finished school, she got a law degree so that, 'I could help people like me,' and she has worked in the union movement ever since. Her siblings are all professional success stories. She has a sister who is an engineer, another sister who works in banking, a brother who is a senior figure with the Commonwealth Bank and another brother who is in landscaping. But, without an immediate assistance program for Afghan refugees, she says she knows that there are family members who will never be seen again. She said: 'I can't go to Afghanistan, not even in 10 years time, with the Taliban there. And where are my cousins going to go? They are going to be tortured and persecuted.'

Australia owes people like Jamila and her cousins, nieces and nephews in Afghanistan immediate consideration. We owe a debt to members of the Australian Defence Force and the diplomatic community who have themselves given so much to the Afghanistan cause, particularly in the case of the 41 ADF members who made the ultimate sacrifice. Of course, 39,000 Australians served over there and have done a wonderful job, as we can see from Jamila's comments about women holding jobs in parliament and in civil society, being properly treated, educated and employed. That is a basis for great pride for us as Australians. There have been calls in recent days from across Australian society to increase the refugee intake from Afghanistan, just as Australia did for Syria in 2015, for China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and even at the conclusion of the Vietnam War and of World War II. Australia has a proud history of offering succour to refugees, a history that is being truncated right now by this callous disregard, dog-whistling and shambolic policymaking. The Prime Minister's opening gambit when Kabul fell to the Taliban last week was to admit, and I quote, 'support won't reach all that it should. On-the-ground events have overtaken many efforts. We wish it were different.' Well, it could be different, if only we were to make it so. Refugees have been the bedrock of modern Australia and have made us the nation we are. We simply owe these people who have laid down everything for Australians in Afghanistan. News reports in recent days have quoted former Australian Army captain Jason Scanes, who said that the delay in processing humanitarian visas applications meant many interpreters, particularly those stranded outside of Kabul, could not be rescued now. Captain Scanes was reported in the Guardian as saying:

The reality is if the government had have been committed to this locally engaged employee visa program efficiently, instead of the lazy, bureaucratic, relaxed attitude to processing application, they would not be facing this huge evacuation operation that the government just doesn't have capacity for.

That was just last month, and yet the wheels have ground ever more slowly. Captain Scanes said the veterans were:

… sick of the marketing of this government … everything is marketing. Just tell us: how many of our mates are left there, what are you doing to get them out, or are you just going to abandon them?

In this crisis, there is no time to dither.

Just last month, the ABC reported a former interpreter who'd worked with Australian forces had been denied a visa to Australia on the grounds he was, and I quote, 'not considered an employee of one of the Australian government agencies'. According to the ABC he said:

When I read the letter saying you are not eligible, I felt like my death warrant has been signed by the Australians.

It is clear that the Taliban will capture and kill me whenever they get a chance.

Even as recently as this weekend, locally engaged employees were reportedly told they did not qualify for visas and should contact a migration agent instead, before being told that they would qualify for asylum after all. We're at a moment in history where we can make decisions we can be proud of and which our children and grandchildren can be proud of, or we can do the wrong thing. The choice is no choice at all. It is Australia's moral imperative to act and to act swiftly by increasing our refugee intake of Afghan people. It's a matter of life and death.