Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This has been a day when Australia has stood tall. This is a day when we stood united and when we have done the right thing by the international community, particularly those poor refugees who are pouring out of Syria.

Tonight at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the Deputy Leader of the Opposition and our foreign spokesman, Tanya Plibersek, distinctly separated our mission in Iraq from Syria. She explained that we support the government in responding to the request from the government of Iraq to preserve its borders. Australia and other forces were invited by Iraq to keep its sovereignty from Daesh fighters who come across the border. Daesh uses its bases in nearby Syria to attack Iraq and the Iraqi people, and we in the opposition have supported the government in that policy.

The organisation that has caused so much mayhem in northern Iraq and in Syria is causing this terrible international situation with people pouring out of Syria. Along with the brutal government of Assad in Syria, it is one of the most violent groups in world history. We all know about the crucifixions and beheadings and about burning people alive, but I particularly want to mention something that horrified me that I think all civilised people should be aware of and should know, and that is what The New York Times on 13 August described as Daesh's 'theology of rape'.

In The New York Times it said that repeatedly the ISIS leadership has emphasised a narrow and selective reading of the Koran and other religious rulings not only to justify violence but to elevate and celebrate sexual assault as spiritually beneficial and virtuous. This is a new horror in world history. The article argues:

The systematic rape of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority has become deeply enmeshed in the organization and the radical theology of—

Daesh—

… in the year since the group announced it was reviving slavery as an institution.

It has been manifest. The New York Times reported:

The trade in Yazidi women … has created a persistent infrastructure, with a network of warehouses where the victims are held, viewing rooms where they are inspected and marketed, and a dedicated fleet of buses used to transport them.

This is not done by coincidence. Daesh made it 'clear in its online magazine that its campaign of enslaving Yazidi women and girls had been extensively preplanned':

"Prior to the taking of Sinjar, Shariah students in the Islamic State were tasked to research the Yazidis," said the English-language article, headlined "The Revival of Slavery Before the Hour," which appeared in the October issue of the magazine …

The magazine of that dreadful group is called Dabiq.

I am very proud that this country stands against that form of barbarism. I think the opposition have ideas that perhaps we should be giving even more for the preservation of the lives of refugees who have poured out of that part of the world. As our foreign spokesman and deputy leader reminded ASPI tonight, only two weeks ago she was being criticised for saying that we should give more civilian aid to Syria by the government, who said that she wanted to drop picnic baskets on terrorists. What a joke that description now assumes. What a joke. But of course, there is a serious point.

There are other countries that are not lifting as heavily as Australia. Europe is doing its bit. There are some countries who our foreign spokesman rightly put the searchlight on who are doing absolutely nothing: Qatar, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait have offered zero resettlement places to Sunni refugees according to Amnesty International, despite the fact that many of these people come from the same Sunni religion. Kuwait has offered $304 million, UAE $540 million but Saudi Arabia only $18.4 million. They should lift their game and do what Australia is doing, do what countries in Europe are doing and contribute to the wellbeing of their co-religionists.