Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

Quite simply, the crisis in Syria and indeed in Iraq is humanity at its worst. The civil war, the Daesh insurgency, has left 11 million people homeless. Four million of those have fled the country of Syria to bordering nations, particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, and many of those have made their way across the Mediterranean to better opportunities in Europe.

The scale of the problem I think is summed up by these simple facts and statistics. Lebanon has a land mass roughly the size of Sydney. It is not very big at all. It has a population of 4.3 million people. Currently, Lebanon is housing one million refugees. One in four people who are currently residing in that country are refugees. It is putting unbearable pressure on the region and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. It is the largest humanitarian crisis and flight of refugees since World War II.

But it has been happening for some years. This is something that Labor in government understood. When we were in government, in response to calls from the UNHCR, Labor boosted our humanitarian intake from 13,000 to 20,000 over the course of a couple of years. As part of that, we boosted the number that we were taking from this war-torn region. Over the period from 2011 to 2013, the Labor government devoted $100 million in aid to humanitarian organisations and agencies that were operating on the ground in Syria and surrounding regions to deal with the humanitarian crisis.

Since that time, unfortunately, the crisis has worsened. Not only have we seen the civil war heightened between the Assad regime and the Free Syrian Army and other rebels, but the Daesh insurgency has got larger. They crushed the Free Syrian Army in the northern town of Azaz. In 2014, in January, they seized Raqqa and important oil and gas fields, which gave them a source of illicit finances to continue their operations. As the insurgency and the fighting have continued, the number of refugees has grown, and the crisis has worsened to become much more urgent.

It pains me to have to say this, but it is unfortunate that Australia's support for that region in terms of humanitarian effort has reduced since the election of the Abbott government. Aid to Iraq was cut to zero. That is a fact. Aid to the Middle East and North Africa was cut by 82 per cent. And the humanitarian refugee intake was cut from 20,000 back to 13,750. I think it is sad that it has taken leadership from Bill Shorten, from Mike Baird and from backbenchers like Craig Laundy to prod the Prime Minister into taking action on this issue, but it is pleasing that thankfully things have changed and the Prime Minister has today announced that Australia will take a one-off commitment of 12,00 additional refugees from Syria. That certainly has Labor's support. Australia must do its fair share, and we finally will do our fair share, but that should be done on a without-prejudice basis in relation to race and religion. It must be on the basis of the advice of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and be principally about saving lives and the urgency. Our philosophy should be 'need, not creed'.

Some on the other side have suggested that, in accepting refugees in the this situation, we are taking 'refugees who can take Aussie jobs'. This statement could not be further from the truth. In September this year, the ABS released a very interesting report on the economic contribution of migrants, and they found that, over the period 2009-10, migrants generated $38 billion in income for Australia. An interesting fact was that humanitarian migrants were the most entrepreneurial. They reported a higher proportion of their income from running their own businesses, and this is an experience that I know well in my electorate, where refugees tend to run their own businesses, and their kids tend to be the most diligent and hardworking students. When they get the opportunity to live in a country like Australia, they make the most of it. That is something that strengthens our diversity, it strengthens our multiculturalism and, based on these on these figures, it strengthens our economy. That is something that Australia should be proud of, and we must contribute in that respect.

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