The Senate leader says Christians are the ‘most persecuted’ group in the world as the debate over how to respond to refugee crisis intensifies

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Christians in the Middle East are “the most persecuted group in the world” and should be given priority in the refugee resettlement process, government Senate leader Eric Abetz has argued.

With the Coalition under pressure to take more refugees from Syria and Tony Abbott offering a haven for persecuted minorities, Abetz told reporters on Tuesday that Syrian Christians should be given preference.

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“I think the Australian people would see a need for that to be a focus,” he said, adding that resettlement should be decided “on the basis of need”.

Christians, he argued, were the most needy.

“Christians are the most persecuted group in the world, and especially in the Middle East, I think it stands to reason that they would be pretty high up on the priority list for resettlement,” Abetz said.

Abbott announced on Sunday that Australia would take more Syrian and Iraqi refugees as part of the refugee resettlement quota, while refusing to increase the overall figure of 13,750.

As divisions within the government on the issue were exposed, Abbott announced in question time on Tuesday that the government would finalise its position on how to respond to the crisis within 24 hours.



Several MPs, including frontbenchers Julie Bishop and Josh Frydenberg, have put pressure on the prime minister to do more.

Abbott reportedly told the joint party room meeting on Tuesday the party would “rule with our heads and not just our hearts” on the issue. He said the party should be “true to our values” while not losing sight of long-term goals.

Refugees were being made to decide between the “anvil of [Syrian president Bashar al] Assad and the hammer of Daesh”.

Seventeen people spoke on refugees in both the joint party meeting and the Liberal party room meeting, most on how there has been a shift on the public’s perception of the issue.

Sarah Henderson told the party room that it’s not just “the ABC and organisations of the left” that are calling on the government to do more to help refugees fleeing the Syrian conflict, but that those who “stood by the government” on their hardline immigration policies also wanted greater action.

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Queensland senator Ian Macdonald, who on Monday told the chamber that he wished the Syrian people would “sort out their own problems”, urged the party room not to “overreact” to the refugee crisis because the party was not ruled “by the ABC or charities”.

During question time, the prime minister criticised the opposition for resettling less than 100 refugees from Syria.

“In the last year, when members opposite were in government, just 98 people were taken,” Abbott said. “They weren’t much interested taking people who were in trouble because of this crisis but they certainly did provide some money.”

Labor wants the government to provide an emergency funding boost of $100m, after the Coalition cut $11bn from Australia’s foreign aid budget in May, including slashing the budget of the UNHCR and aid programs in the Middle East.

The divisions within the government were exposed yet again, after colleagues publicly rebuked backbencher Cory Bernardi for saying people fleeing to Europe were doing so not for their own safety, but for economic reasons.

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“Many of these people have been very safely ensconced, working and housed in places like Turkey for many years,” Bernardi told the Senate on Monday. “This seems to me to be becoming an opportunistic cycle which is masking the true humanitarian need that is the responsibility of all western nations.”

“Good on you, Cory,” fellow backbencher Ewen Jones said. “What do you expect from someone like Cory? He plays to his constituency and that’s the hard part.”

Labor wants the government to make 10,000 permanent places available through the humanitarian resettlement scheme for Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

The makeup of that group would depend on the United Nations refugee agency, the shadow immigration minister, Richard Marles, said.

“They are the entity which has the helicopter view of need in the world today,” Marles told reporters on Tuesday. “If our mission statement is to use our humanitarian program to the best possible affect in reducing the sum of global human misery, it is the UNHCR that can give us that advice.”

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, took a similar view.

“Being a victim of war doesn’t know a particular religion. We’re interested in making sure minorities and oppressed groups have access to safety. But if you’re a woman facing terrible crimes committed against you, if you’re a little child potentially drowning at sea, I’m not interested in their religion, I’m interested in their safety,” Shorten said.

The foreign minister, Julie Bishop, told ABC Radio that persecuted minorities may never been able to return to their homelands, even after the conflict is over.

“That includes Maronites, it includes Yazidis, there are Druze. There are a whole range of ethnic and religious minorities that make up the populations in both Syria and Iraq and we’ll be focussing our attention particularly on the families who are in refugee camps along the borders of Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey,” she said.

The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, is returning from Europe where he attended talks with the UN and aid groups like the Red Cross on how Australia can best respond to the asylum crisis.



“The government will consider these discussions and the outcome of these talks in making our decision on Australia’s contribution to the crisis,” Abbott told parliament during question time.



Dutton will brief the national security council on the discussions late on Tuesday night.

Crossbenchers will be given their own briefing on Wednesday evening by UNHCR’s director of Middle East and North Africa operations, Amin Awad.