Barry O'Sullivan (Queensland, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

If Senator Di Natale has a couple of minutes later, I am happy to go through a little spelling program. My name is O'Sullivan; I wear it proudly.

Emotions run very deep on this. I suspect that, in the time that we have been here debating these issues, there are people in the Middle East in these conflicts who have lost their lives, and that will continue unabated while we talk. This is not a time for talk. I have gone on the public record encouraging my own government to consider an expansion of humanitarian measures, including lifting the number of refugees from that region who could be removed from that conflict and brought here immediately. I feel very strongly about these issues. I feel very strongly about the position the Greens have taken—the same party who supported policies that saw over a thousand refugees die on the high seas, drowned; men, women and children. I say to you: you need to consider these issues as if you had a personal interest in the people on the ground in Iraq, as if your heritage was Kurdish.