JULIAN HILL MP
MEMBER FOR BRUCE
MARK DREYFUS MP
MEMBER FOR ISAACS
ANTHONY BYRNE MP
MEMBER FOR HOLT
HUMANITARIAN SITUATION IN AFGHANISTAN
The security and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is devastating for Afghanistan's people and their families in Australia.
We are proud to represent electorates with large Afghan-Australian communities and have been deeply moved by the overwhelming number of calls, letters and emails to our offices from families desperate for news of their loved ones and seeking urgent help to get their relatives out of Afghanistan.
We are grateful to the Australian Defence Force personnel carrying out this mission and to the officials from the Departments of Foreign Affairs, Home Affairs and Defence who have gone in to assist those on the ground. We thank them for their courage.
However, the Afghan-Australian community has a right to feel angry that the Morrison-Joyce Government ignored persistent pleas for more urgent action for so long and failed to act until it was much too late.
For many months, veterans, former prime ministers and Labor have been calling for urgent action from the Morrison-Joyce Government to fulfil Australia's moral obligation to the Afghans who have risked everything to support our mission and to speed up the processing of family, partner and other visas.
This humanitarian crisis was foreseeable, and many people seeking protection here could have been spared the deeply distressing scenes we witnessed at Kabul airport had the government and acted sooner.
To the many members of the Afghan-Australian community across our electorates of Bruce, Holt and Isaacs, we offer our deepest sympathies for the distress you have suffered in recent weeks. We will continue to stand by you in the difficult days ahead and we will do everything that we can to help.
MONDAY, 30 AUGUST 2021
