2024-02-27
Today the Greens moved to suspend Senate Standing Orders to insist Labor immediately reinstate essential, live-saving UNRWA funding to Gaza amid the genocide and worsening humanitarian catastrophe.
Senator Mehreen Faruqi is Greens Deputy Leader and spokesperson for International Aid and spoke to her motion (attached) in the Senate today:
"Catastrophic famine, hunger, starvation and disease loom large in Gaza, yet it’s been 31 days since Labor suspended funding to UNRWA without seeing a shred of evidence on Israel’s allegations and today they refused to restore it.
"Minister Wong on one hand admits that UNRWA does life-saving work and then on the other hand halts funding. No one is being fooled by this doublespeak.
“The anger, frustration and sense of betrayal in the community is palpable and rightly so.
“Labor’s moral bankruptcy and utter hypocrisy on Palestine is inexcusable. People will not forget and forgive the murder of 30,000 Palestinians and the starvation of millions.
“If they can’t show up for the community now, they shouldn’t dare show up for photo shoots at our iftars next month.
“If there is a skerrick of humanity left in Labor, they should restore and increase funding to UNRWA.”
Motion by leave
I move —That the Senate:
(a) notes:
(i) that on 27 January 2024, the Labor government suspended funding for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) without having seen any evidence of Israel’s claims about UNRWA,
(ii) the Labor government halted funding for UNRWA without any evidence of Israel’s claims, yet continues to support Israel’s atrocities despite the International Court of Justice finding that Israel is plausibly committing genocide,
(iii) that the survival of millions of Palestinians depends on the life-saving aid they receive from UNRWA, the largest relief agency in Gaza,
(iv) UNRWA Chief Philippe Lazzarini said on 22 February 2024 that “the Agency has reached breaking point, with Israel’s repeated calls to dismantle UNRWA and the freezing of funding by donors at a time of unprecedented humanitarian needs in Gaza”,
(v) the humanitarian situation in Gaza is catastrophic – famine, starvation, disease, injury and suffering is pervasive, and there is a desperate need for significant humanitarian assistance. In addition to murdering of 30,000 Palestinians, Israel’s genocide has injured nearly 70,000 Palestinians, and forcibly displaced 1.7 million people, and
(vi) that the Labor government’s current funding of UNRWA is still lower than Australian government funding of UNRWA a decade ago in 2014, and significantly less than is needed to address the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza; and
(b) calls on the Government to:
(i) immediately restore funding to UNRWA, and
(ii) rapidly increase funding to UNRWA.