Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

It's very disappointing that the government has prevented this motion from being brought on today, because what is happening to the Rohingya people in Myanmar right now is nothing less than a human rights disaster. It's the Greens' view that the Australian government has simply very weakly expressed concern about what is going on, because the Australian embassy put out a statement urging:

… all sides to exercise restraint and respect human rights.

That has echoes of Donald Trump's response to the Nazi rallies in Charlottesville in the United States, and Prime Minister Turnbull has to do better than that. The appalling truth is that we don't know how many Rohingya are being killed. It is vastly more than 400. We've had to amend this motion in real time to reflect what's going on. We have to hold the Myanmar government to account and allow more Rohingya refugees into Australia.