The immigration minister, Alex Hawke, has been urged to heed Australia’s “moral obligation” to Afghan nationals fleeing the Taliban by ensuring resettlement places are on top of the existing humanitarian intake.
A delegation of faith groups, veterans’ advocates and members of the Afghan diaspora met with Hawke in Canberra on Monday to implore him to ramp up assistance after 20 years of Australian military involvement in Afghanistan.
It is understood Hawke did not rule out the option of offering additional places for Afghan nationals.
In addition to the request to increase the overall humanitarian intake, the group also argued it was “cruel” for the government to leave Afghan nationals in limbo on temporary protection visas because they had previously arrived in Australia by boat.
Hawke announced last month the government would provide “at least 15,000 places for Afghan nationals, through our humanitarian and family visa program over four years”.
That “multi-year” figure included 10,000 places for Afghan nationals within Australia’s existing humanitarian program and at least 5,000 visas within the family stream.
But the Rev Tim Costello, one of nine members in Monday’s delegation and the executive director of Micah Australia, said the announcement was “mean and tricky” because it did not result in any additional places.
Costello said that could be fixed if the government followed the example set by the Abbott government in 2015 when its offer to take 12,000 refugees from the conflict in Syria and Iraq was in addition to the pre-existing humanitarian intake.
The substance of the complaint is that failing to increase the overall global intake means Afghan nationals may, in effect, take the places of individuals from other countries who are also in need of protection.
Australia has set an overall limit of 13,750 humanitarian visas for the current financial year.
“We can actually open up our hearts and do what Tony Abbott did when he took 12,000 additional Syrians and Iraqis,” Costello said on Monday.
“We know that government backbenchers, even some government cabinet ministers, really believe there should be additional places, that this matter isn’t over, and it can be fixed. It should be fixed.”
Mariam Veiszadeh, a spokesperson for the Afghanistan-Australian Advocacy Network, said Afghanistan was in “a state of anarchy” and urged Hawke to act. “With the stroke of a pen, it’s that simple – he’s able to save people’s lives,” she said.
Veiszadeh said she was hearing from her extended family and other contacts in Afghanistan that the situation “really varies”, but some people with young children were avoiding leaving their homes “out of fear that they could be abducted”.
“The way that it’s been put to me is life is not worth living when you don’t know what tomorrow holds, you don’t know what the future of your children holds,” she said.
“I get inundated with messages from different people across Afghanistan, who are facing dire situations, and it absolutely breaks my heart.”
Afghanistan was a human tragedy, Veiszadeh said, citing Unicef’s estimate that about 1 million children under five were likely to die before the end of 2022.
“We have a moral obligation,” Veiszadeh said.
“I’ve gotten to the point where I can’t answer phone calls any more when I know they’re coming from Afghanistan, because frankly, I find it really triggering and I don’t know what to say to people.”
Veiszadeh said “any bit of hope that we give [people who call seeking help], any glimmer of hope” meant “they’re willing to risk their lives of themselves and their children” to flee the country.
As of last month, the Department of Home Affairs had received more than 32,500 applications for the humanitarian program from Afghan nationals on behalf of more than 145,000 individuals.
Glen Kolomeitz, a director at GAP Veteran & Legal Services, said he regularly received calls from Australian veterans of the Afghanistan war asking why Australia was not doing more to help the Afghan people.
“I’ve had veterans say to me, we’ve got a spare room, we’ve got a holiday house, we’ve got a caravan – send me some Afghan families and they can live with us,” he said.
Kolomeitz said the issue was having an effect on the mental health of veterans, who believed it was “painfully obvious that promises weren’t kept”.
“We were there for 20 years in that country, 20 years, we cut and run essentially, we left with the rest of the coalition forces, we’ve left that country in a state which we’re seeing now, in a crisis state,” he said.
“We owe moral obligation, not just to Afghans who worked for Australian agencies, but to the Afghan people more broadly.”
The Australian Christian Lobby’s Wendy Francis said the delegation was also pressing for Afghan nationals who have been in limbo on temporary protection visas for years to be given a pathway to permanent residency.
“We’ve got people who are on temporary protection visas, who cannot go back to Afghanistan, we know that,” she said. “It’s cruel actually to keep them still on temporary protection visas as well.”
Comment has been sought from Hawke. The delegation also met with Labor shadow minister Andrew Giles, Coalition backbenchers Damian Drum and Russell Broadbent, and independent Rebekha Sharkie.
