Turnbull’s commitments at Obama refugee summit “hardly groundbreaking”

Commitments made by Malcolm Turnbull at the landmark Obama refugee summit in New York are welcomed but hardly groundbreaking says Save the Children.

The global aid agency has also criticised Turnbull’s failure to use his presence at landmark refugee meetings in New York this week to announce an immediate, humane and sustainable resettlement solution for refugees and asylum seekers.

While Save the Children chief executive Paul Ronalds welcomed Turnbull’s announcement of a $130 million boost in Australia’s assistance for refugees in other nations, and to help the countries which are hosting them, he added the Prime Minister had failed to back this up with a meaningful increase in Australia’s refugee resettlement intake.

“Claiming that the maintenance of Australia’s already stated humanitarian intake for 2018-19 of 18,750 places into future years is some kind of significant pledge to help the international community deal with the global refugee crisis is disingenuous of the Prime Minister,” Ronalds said.

“Swiftly increasing Australia’s humanitarian intake to 30,000 places by 2018-19 would have been a much better response to the current scale of the crisis and a truer reflection of Australia’s social and economic capacity to resettle refugees.

“While we welcome any additional financial contribution by Australia towards helping children and adults forced to flee their homes from conflict and persecution, the $130 million announced by the Prime Minister pales in comparison to the $9.6 billion the Australian Government has spent since 2013 maintaining its damaging and isolationist ‘deterrence-based’ asylum seeker policy.”

Ronalds said it also compares unfavourably to the $11 billion cut the Australian Government has made to the overseas aid budget in recent years.

“Australia needs to play its part alongside the rest of the world to help better protect vulnerable children and their parents who have been forced to flee their homes due to conflict and persecution,” he said. 

Turnbull was one of dozens of world leaders who attended a special meeting on refugees that was convened by US President Barack Obama on Tuesday in New York.

Ronalds said it was embarrassing that Turnbull had appeared on this world stage while his government could still not offer a resettlement solution for those refugees and asylum seekers Australia had transferred to Nauru and Manus Island.

“Upon returning to Australia, the Prime Minister must immediately redouble efforts to find a solution to the stalemate on Nauru and Manus Island. We know that this is what Australian voters want to see – just last week our polling revealed that 66 per cent of Australians want the Prime Minister to find a safe and sustainable solution to get people off Nauru and Manus Island,” Ronalds said.