Josh Frydenberg suggests one-off resettlement in Australia in response to humanitarian crisis, after the prime minister rules out overall rise in numbers

Australia should consider a one-off increase in the number of refugee resettlement places for Syrian refugees in light of the European migration crisis, ministers have urged Tony Abbott.

On Sunday the prime minister said the government would consider increasing the number of Syrians and Iraqis it would take as part of the humanitarian resettlement quota, but ruled out an overall increase in numbers.

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The assistant treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, said on Monday that Australia should consider boosting the intake to deal with the crisis, as the former prime minister, John Howard, did in the late 1990s after the Kosovo war ended.

“There is a very good case here for a specific response to what we are seeing from those tragic pictures in Europe,” he told Sky News on Monday. “Maybe what John Howard did in 1999 with the Kosovars could be a bit of a guide for us. He took 4,000 at that time. Some of those went home, but he did provide humanitarian response and shelter for those people who are fleeing persecution.”

The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, made similar observations.

“I actually spoke about the Kosovo matter yesterday and said that’s something we should consider and that’s something that I will be raising with other foreign ministers – whether that’s an international response that would work in these circumstances – we’ll certainly take advice on that,” she told reporters on Monday.

Malcolm Turnbull, the communications minister, said Australia needed to review its response and called for people to have “big hearts”.

At state level New South Wales premier Mike Baird, who has called for more to be done for the refugees, and South Australia premier Jay Weatherill, were planning an announcement on Monday. Weatherill said South Australia could take 1,000 refugees.

Daniel Andrews, the premier of Victoria also said the state was “ready to stump up and to step up … To provide a second chance in life to those who, through what is an international humanitarian crisis, need our outstretched hand of friendship.”

Australia currently takes 13,750 refugees, and will increase that number to more than 18,000 in the coming years. In July, Labor voted at its national conference to increase its humanitarian intake to 27,000.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, is in Geneva to meet with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on ways in which Australia can do its share, as thousands of migrants pour into Europe to escape Islamic State.



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Syrian refugees make up about 30% of Australia’s current refugee intake, after the government announced last year that it would increase the intake to 4,500, as part of the overall 13,750 placements.

“Australia has already taken 4,500 and, yes, we will do more,” Abbott told reporters on Monday. “We will do more. Because this is an ongoing crisis but let’s not forget what we have already done and let’s not forget the comparative generosity that Australia has always shown in situations like this.”

“We have always been a country that shoulders its responsibilities, that pulls its weight globally. We take on a per capita basis more refugees than any other country on Earth through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. And we are going to build on that in the weeks and months ahead. There will be a very strong humanitarian response from Australia,” Abbott said.

Australia does take a high percentage of refugees through its resettlement program, but does not rank among the world leaders when the overall figure – which includes those who come through unofficial channels – is taken into account.

Any increase in intake would come from persecuted minorities, like Syrian Christians, waiting in UN refugee camps.

Abbott argued that stopping the flow of asylum seeker boats has given Australia the flexibility to decide who gains refugee status.

“This is one of the dividends of stopping the boats. Because we have stopped the boats, it’s the Australian government which is now able to select people who come in under our refugee and humanitarian intake,” he said. “Under the former government it was the people smugglers doing the selection.”

Labor said the Coalition’s response was not good enough.

“If all that’s being offered is a re-prioritisation of an existing program, well then in effect the government is not offering anything at all,” the shadow immigration minister, Richard Marles, said. “Given there is an existing [resettlement] program, that means somebody else misses out.”

He said that the government needs to go “over and above” the existing 13,750 quota.

The social services minister, Scott Morrison, who was the architect of the government’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy in his previous portfolio of immigration, said the government is doing just that.

“We already have. Last financial year we freed up 4,500 places within our refugee and humanitarian intake. Those are places that would not have been available, were it no the for this government’s success in stopping the boats. In particular, for Iraqis and Syrians, we were able to increase our intake last year by about a third,” Morrison told reporters.

“One of the first things we did, after stopping the boats, was increase our intake out of Syria and Iraq.”

“We have increased the intake over the forward estimates to 18,750,” he said.

Morrison said limiting the refugee intake allowed the government to focus on the Asia-Pacific.

“It wasn’t that long ago where we were talking about the issues of the Rohingya refugee crisis in our own region. The government hasn’t, I believe, forgotten about that issue as well,” he said. “We have challenges in our own region and those challenges are just as important because they deal with the human souls that are affected in our own region as well.”

In May, Abbott flatly refused to resettle Rohingya asylum seekers, many of whom were caught in a standoff on the Andaman Sea, saying they must “come through the front door”.

The UNHCR in Bangladesh, where tens of thousands of Rohingyas fled after leaving Myanmar, stopped resettling asylum seekers in 2010, after the Bangladeshi government argued that the international resettlement program represented a “pull factor” that attracted Rohingya asylum seekers.

The Coalition government announced that no person who arrived in Australia via boat would be resettled here, meaning that only refugees processed through the UNHCR could ever have a chance of calling Australia home. Since that option is cut off, Rohingyas have little chance of resettling in Australia.

Morrison indicated Australia had more pressing immediate concerns other than the issue of resettling Syrian refugees.

“Right now, with hundreds of thousands of people on the move, there is a need to address the immediate needs that are there,” he said on Macquarie Radio on Monday morning.