Australia could accept far more refugees than even the 10,000 called for by Labor, the New South Wales premier, Mike Baird, has suggested on ABC’s Q&A program as the world reacts to thousands of people fleeing Islamic State arriving in Europe.
The country’s response to the growing refugee crisis, brought into sharp relief by the image of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi – whose body was washed on to a Turkish beach after his family tried to flee Syria on a boat – should not be about politics, Baird said, and Australia should do as much as it could.
“All of us have been moved by that image and many of the images we’ve seen,” Baird told the panel and audience. “There must be action. We can’t sit here in this country and let those sort of events take place.”
On Sunday Tony Abbott said his government would consider taking a larger proportion of Syrian and Iraqi people within the current limits – set by the government – on humanitarian visas. The prime minister ruled out lifting that number beyond the goal of increasing it from 13,750 places to 18,750 in 2018-19.
Labor has called for a one-off increase of 10,000 refugee placements while the Greens have called for 20,000. Government ministers have also supported emergency action.
On Q&A the shadow treasurer, Chris Bowen, said Australia should not take Syrian people over other refugees.
“[To do that] is saying we’re going to take less refugees from South Sudan, Africa, anywhere else,” he said. “They shouldn’t be the ones who pay a price because we’re taking more people from Syria.”
Baird pushed Bowen on the 10,000 figure and said: “It was very easy to put a number up. Who’s to say we can’t do more?”
He reiterated previous statements that NSW was “happy to play a big role” in a larger humanitarian response, including with financial support, and noted other states had also come forward offering to take in thousands of people.
The ABC program spent much of its first half discussing Australia’s response to increasing calls for greater assistance as thousands of people cross Europe on foot, seeking asylum.
It took place as tens of thousands of Australians took to the streets in #LightTheDark vigils to honour Aylan Kurdi and call for generosity towards asylum seekers by the Australian government.
While Baird defended the lack of commitment made by Abbott in recent days, saying the prime minister had pledged to act and had sent the immigration minister, Peter Dutton, to Geneva, he added: “But ultimately what we have to do is do more.”
Dutton will make his assessment on Australia’s response after speaking with of the UN high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, in Geneva. “It is my intention to listen to the advice of the minister,” Abbott said in parliament on Monday.
Catherine Livingstone, the president of the Business Council of Australia, supported calls for a greater humanitarian response but told Q&A Australia had to ensure it was prepared for the long-term response, with “compassion continuing for as long as it takes”.
The human rights lawyer and activist Geoffrey Robertson said: “We should be taking 30,000 at least because the message is no country is an island, not even Australia.”
He criticised Abbott’s decision to send Dutton to Geneva “at considerable expense” when the conversation with Guterres could have been had on the phone.
“[Guterres] will be telling Mr Dutton in a few hours what he told the Guardian this morning, that people in its refugee camps … are having their medical services cut,” Robertson said.
The UN has warned its humanitarian agencies are on the verge of bankruptcy owing to the scale of the crisis. “They have $13 a month to feed and clothe each family,” Robertson said. “I’d hope that as well as taking at least 30,000 [refugees] Australia will also step up with a large amount of money.”
The Q&A episode was largely free of its usual partisan cross-panel hostility and covered topics including Senate obstructionism, tax reform and the GST, and voluntary euthanasia.
A question on whether Labor would support the expected Coalition announcement of Australian forces being sent to bomb Isis targets prompted Bowen to question what the mission would be. “Is it to degrade Isis? … is it to bring down the Assad regime?” he asked.
“If we’ve learned anything from the last 15 years in the Middle East it’s that we are very quick to go in but we don’t think enough about what comes next.”
Robertson also dismissed the idea, noting that the London blitz, which occurred 75 years ago on Monday, had not “degraded” the fight in Londoners.
“Bombing by itself will not destroy Isis,” he said. “On the contrary they will embed themselves with the local people and build a resistance that allows them to fight and fight again.”
Robertson also said that in any “real democracy” such a decision would be debated and voted upon in parliament, not decided by a government.
In response to a question about voluntary euthanasia, Helen Joyce, the international editor of the Economist which has written editorials in support of the policy, said “political cowardice” was the reason it was not yet legal.
She noted law reform in various other countries had been in place for a while, “and we haven’t seen the sky fall in”.
Bowen said the issue had not been debated in federal parliament in more than a decade and “it should be on the agenda”.
He added: “I would guess there would be strong support on my side of politics for some kind of reform here. At the end of the day it is about dying with dignity.”
