The Global Refugee Crisis

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According to this report in the New York Times (The Flight of Refugees Around the Globe)  there are 60 million refugees in the world today - the highest number ever recorded by the United Nations. Many of these people have been displaced as a result of conflicts in which Australia has been a willing participant. Just as the Chifley Government accepted refugees from Europe after the Second World War and the Fraser Government accepted refugees after the Vietnam War, Australia today has a responsibility to help people fleeing from current and recent conflicts.

In our own region, there are currently around 150,000 displaced people in refugee camps in Malaysia and another 10,000 in Indonesia. The most recent figures for our intake from these two countries indicates we expected to resettle 450 refugees from Indonesia in 2014/15 and we resettled approximately 1000 people from Malaysia in 2013/14.

Of course we should be doing all we reasonably can to stop people from attempting dangerous sea crossings. However punishing and incarcerating desperate people who arrive by sea is not a humane response. As the Refugee Council says we should "work   collaboratively with countries of asylum in the Asia-Pacific region to develop sustainable programs of support for the protection of refugees and asylum seekers within their borders and allocate additional resources for this purpose".

Off-shore detention is costing Australia $1.2 billion this financial year. In line with the call from the Refugee Council, it would be far more cost effective and indeed humane for Australia to allocate something like that level of resourcing to support the protection of refugees in Malaysia and Indonesia, restore our annual refugee intake back to at the very least 20,000 and preferably increase it to 30,000 and also fund settlement services across the country. (At 20,000 a year it would still take 5 years to fill the MCG!)

Give desperate refugees a real alternative to seeking out "people smugglers" and putting their lives at risk.  As a wealthy country, to use the words of Joe Hockey, we could and should be doing more of the heavy lifting in response to the global humanitarian crisis.