Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has defended the government's decision not to resettle the thousands of Rohingyan and Burmese asylum seekers at the centre of the escalating migrant crisis, saying Australia is not in a position to help every displaced person in the world.
Mr Dutton said Australia was instead providing assistance to both the United Nations for High Commission on Refugees and the International Organisation for Migration to assist with one of the fastest growing refugee issues in our region.
"Just to deal in the facts - we provide significant funding to the UNHCR in Indonesia," Mr Dutton said during an interview in Brisbane on Friday morning. "We provide significant funding to the IOM, operating in Indonesia, but elsewhere. We're a significant donor to the IOM."
According to this month's budget the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade gave the UNHCR $20 million, down by 5 per cent from $21 million.
The Department of Immigration and Border Protection also cut $29 million to the funding allocation of the IOM.
Mr Dutton said people were not grasping "all the facts" in what support Australia is offering to the south-east Asian crisis and that the country was not in a position to help every displaced person in the world.
"We cannot be in a situation, having the most generous humanitarian program in the world, to then say - or to pretend cruelly to people - that somehow we can take millions of people from regions around the world that would be displaced."
The tragedy has been going on for "years and years", Mr Dutton said.
"I don't think people are aware of all the work that we do but the significant situation is that playing out at the moment in relation to the Rohingyas has been ongoing for a number of years and there is lot of work that the Burmese need to do to recognise the Rohingyas and provide them with safety."
Mr Dutton also defended the government's position saying Australia was "probably the first or second most generous country in the world on a per capita basis when it comes to the number of refugees we settle in our country".
The number of refugees resettled in Australia this year was 13,750. It will go to 18,750 in 2018.
Under the previous Labor government the number of offshore refugee places was 20,000.
Last year, the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide has exceeded 50 million for the first time since World War II, a United Nations report shows.
In response to Indonesia's criticism of Australia's response to the crisis, Mr Dutton downplayed it as "an Indonesian-based individual who has provided some comment".
"These comments you make in relation to the Indonesian government, that is not what the Indonesian government has said."
"I suspect that once that person is armed with all of the facts they may well quickly retreat from their position because the support that we provide is the most significant of any donor in the region," he said.
