The Liberal MP Jason Falinski says he won’t let “anyone criticise Australia’s refugee program”, amid a growing chorus of international and domestic criticism over Australia’s slow resettlement of Syrian refugees.
The former prime minister Tony Abbott pledged to take 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees in 2015, in a move that was at the time lauded as a significant improvement in Australia’s humanitarian intake.
But the Australian government has now come under sustained criticism over breaking this promise – only 3,632 people have been resettled.
On Saturday, Falinski grew defensive on ABC TV after the New South Wales Greens MP David Shoebridge pointed to the criticism by World Vision, the United Nations and other groups, of Australia’s failure to resettle the Syrian refugees it had committed to take in.
“I’m not going to let anyone criticise Australia’s refugee program. It is one of the best in the world, the most generous. The criticisms you are making are broad-based,” Falinski said.
“Are you telling us we don’t have one of the most generous refugee programs in the world? Are you telling me the Australian community isn’t one of the most generous communities in the world?”
Shoebridge pointed to Canada’s fast processing of Syrian asylum seekers and its substantial commitment compared with Australia, and said Malcolm Turnbull’s government had showed “a lack of political will” to resettle them.
“The people on the ground are saying Australia has been dragging the chain. They point to Canada. Canada has enormous integrity in its intake system. It’s processed almost 10 times as many refugees in the same time as Australia,” he said.
“A generous promise is great. But we want generosity on the ground. We need to bring them here.”
The immigration minister, Peter Dutton, has also defended the program, claiming that “the scrutiny that we apply is greater than Canada”.
The global response to the growing migration crisis around the world is likely to come under further scrutiny later in September, with the US president, Barack Obama, hosting a migration summit in the middle of the United Nations general assembly.
