Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The greatest humanitarian disaster in our time, in Syria, has just entered its seventh year. Today this building welcomed representative Mireille Girard, from Lebanon, and of course Thomas Albrecht, the regional representative for UNHCR. They've updated us on the talks in Geneva that are being led by Staffan de Mistura in an effort to bring the warring parties together, which up until now has been futile. The number of people affected by Syria is simply impossible to conceive, living here in Australia, with around 11 million people requiring assistance; 6.1 million displaced; and 5.1 million additional people over the borders, 2.9 million in Turkey and 1.5 million in Lebanon, a nation with a population only about three times as high. Through the bitter winters, we are having to find a solution with medicines, fuel, education and insulation for tents in precarious conditions where you can't even build a house because it's deemed to be a permanent structure.

We need to be working as hard as we can, both with the world-leading resettlement program for Syrian refugees that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott supported and also with the very flexible funding that leading nations are giving to the UNHCR to enable them to deliver the Regional Refugee and Resilience Plan. It may cost $6 billion to help these people, and still we can't get a ceasefire or even an agreement to de-escalate. This will continue to challenge the world and continue to challenge the UN, and I urge every one of the members in this place to support those efforts.