Australia will offer 3000 humanitarian visas for people fleeing the crisis in Afghanistan. Yesterday Prime Minister Scott Morrison confirmed Australia would not expand its refugee program to take more.
“COVID has meant that the process of running our refugee and humanitarian program, like all of our visa programs, have been running at lower levels,” Morrison said.
Meanwhile, just 26 people left Kabul on a military evacuation flight with space for more than 100. Despite months of calls for such a flight, it landed after Kabul had fallen by which time the security situation was too perilous for many people to get to the airport.
The government has also refused to confirm it will grant full residency to Afghans in Australia on protection visas.
“No Afghan visa holder will be asked to return to Afghanistan at this stage,” Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne said.
This morning, Immigration Minister Alex Hawke refused to provide clarity for people on protection visas and their families.
Throughout the withdrawal, the government cast a narrow net of protection to Afghans trying to escape the Taliban. Past governments, many of them Liberal governments, have dealt with humanitarian crises with far more generosity.
Syria
In 2015, then prime minister Tony Abbott promised to take 12,000 refugees from Syria as the endless civil war and advance of Islamic State left millions displaced.
That decision followed a bipartisan push to expand Australia’s intake. First, Abbott talked up the prospect of taking more refugees but wouldn’t give a figure. But he also faced calls from Liberal backbenchers and state premiers to respond to the humanitarian crisis. Labor leader Bill Shorten called on the government to commit to a one-off increase of 10,000 people on top of Australia’s regular refugee intake.
In one of his final acts as prime minister, Abbott one-upped him, committing to take 12,000.
Kosovo
Ahead of the decision to expand the Syrian intake, Liberal MPs frequently pointed to the Howard government’s evacuation of Kosovar refugees in 1999. A violent crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by largely Serb forces led to thousands displaced.
Australia responded with “Operation Safe Haven”, an evacuation mission which gave 4000 Kosovars temporary protection in Australia. Howard spun this as a moment of great generosity, and the Liberals mythologised it as such. Protection for Kosovars was temporary, and within months the government was pressuring them to return home. Only a handful stayed.
The Howard government also evacuated and provided similar temporary protection to 1800 people from Timor-Leste later that year.
Tiananmen Square
The Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 moved prime minister Bob Hawke to tears. It also moved him to act, granting asylum to about 42,000 Chinese students in Australia. Cabinet documents released 25 years later show Hawke acted unilaterally — despite significant pressure from key departments.
Vietnam
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, prime minister Gough Whitlam was reluctant to offer protection to substantial numbers of South Vietnamese. That changed dramatically under his Liberal successor, Malcolm Fraser. His government openly accepted Vietnamese refugees, with about 100,000 finally settling in Australia — despite widespread opposition.
Over the past few days, there have been many comparisons drawn between the fall of Saigon and the Taliban’s recapture of Kabul. But the approach taken by two different Australian governments to people caught in the crisis couldn’t be more stark.
What Morrison et al do about helping Afghan will be a further mar of the man . Compare the role of Fraser and Hawke.I cannot see him changing his spot re how to handle refugees.
I don’t know who the real ScoMo is – it’s just so hard to see through all the coal dust surrounding him. I’m fact I sometimes I think he is a creation of marketing – just a cardboard cutout that thinks he is humane.
The long-running Brereton inquiry found “credible information” to implicate 25 current or former Australian Defence Force personnel in the alleged unlawful killing of 39 individuals and the cruel treatment of two others in Afghanistan.
The inquiry recommended that allegations against 19 individuals be referred for criminal investigation, a task now being undertaken by the OSI, led by the former prosecutor and judge Mark Weinberg QC.
But the rapid collapse of the government in Afghanistan after the US-led withdrawal of western military forces from the country puts a cloud over that process. TG
The Brereton inquiry recommended that allegations against 19 individuals be referred for criminal investigation, a task now being undertaken by the OSI, …But the rapid collapse of the government in Afghanistan after the US-led withdrawal of western military forces from the country puts a cloud over that process. TG
This pusillanimous government is utterly shameful. Morrison and Dutton are utter cowardly creeps.
Morrison has the compassion of a creepy Christian
Morrison could well be remembered as one of Australia’s most mean-spirited, small minded and inward looking Australian Prime Minister’s ever. Despite being on different sides of politics, Tony Abbott, John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard clearly had more of a moral compass than Morrison has ever had.
Alex Hawke is not much better. He is a cold apparatchik. Would never invite him to a party. Too dull, robot like.
The only acting lazy Scott the part-time PM has ever done was in a vapor-rub ad.
He’s definitely no milkybar kid.