Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Given the horrendous events now taking place in Afghanistan will the government reconsider this year's budget cut to the humanitarian program that reduced refugee intake places from 18,750 to just 13,750 places?

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for her question. As the member will know, the government has been involved in significant efforts to bring people out of Afghanistan and, in particular, during the evacuation, some 4,100 people were brought out of Afghanistan, over 3,000 of them coming to Australia. The majority of those were those who were seeking refuge here in Australia. The majority of those were those who had been locally engaged employees and their families.

What the government has committed to do is to bring at least 3,000 people in under our Refugee and Humanitarian Program this year, and if there are more that we can take this year we will take them. I am not putting a cap on how many we can potentially take this year. I see the 3,000 as the minimum that we would hope to take. Through the work of the National Security Committee, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the minister for immigration we have been diligently seeking to identify additional people who have been able to take themselves to a place where they have also been able to leave Afghanistan and we've been able to bring them here to Australia as well, subsequent to the evacuation. We will continue to do this and we will not be restrained by what the current cap is on the Refugee and Humanitarian Program. This has been a topic that I have been engaged in directly. We recently had a G20 leaders meeting that I participated in, where not only were we able to make reference to the work that we are already doing but we are working with the special envoy in Qatar to ensure that we are working with other like-minded countries, with Canada, the United Kington, Great Britain, the United States and others to ensure that we are providing safe channels to be able to come from Afghanistan and to be able to make their way into the various refugee and humanitarian programs that are being run by countries such as Australia.

Australia has the second highest per capita refugee and humanitarian program in the world. It is a generous program. We run the best settlement services in the world. We have a proud reputation for doing that. We will continue to provide that support to those who are seeking our assistance through that program. It has the highest priority of our Refugee and Humanitarian Program. We are working closely, through all of our offices and through all of our partners, to provide as much support as we possibly can.