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Monday, 23 August 2021
Page: 34

Senator GRIFF (South Australia) (13:42): [by video link] I, like many others, urge the federal government to massively increase the number of humanitarian visas offered to Afghan refugees. Last week, Minister Hawke announced an initial 3,000 places but these will be within the humanitarian program of 13,750 places already allocated for this year; it will not be extra places. You have to ask the question: What happens to those poor souls who were in that original 13,750 and who will now potentially miss out?

When the world is witnessing a humanitarian crisis, we have a responsibility to act, if on no other basis than compassion for our fellow humans. Our hasty departure from what is widely considered a failed state has allowed the Taliban to return at a speed which has stunned the world. It is not only interpreters and other locally engaged employees who are now terrified for their lives and very much terrified for their future; women and girls who remain are facing the prospect of returning to the days of old—a terrifying fate of sexual slavery, oppression and subjugation, a future where they will be denied an education, denied the ability to move freely in society or to have their voices heard.

Those who flee must be able to find safe refuge. Canada, for example, has stepped forward and offered to take 20,000 Afghan refugees on top of their humanitarian program—on top of the program. We should very much be doing the same. After 20 years we cannot simply walk away. In 2015, Australia responded to the civil war in Syria with 12,000 additional humanitarian places for fleeing refugees. That was the right decision and the humane decision, and it is time now for Australia to do the same and contribute more places of safe haven to those in need.