A group of young leaders from Kiribati and Tuvalu are this week visiting parliamentarians in Canberra to encourage the parliamentarians and the people of Australia to rethink their climate change policies.

“The Government’s decision to suspend the granting of new permanent protection visas for asylum seekers is a new low in Australia’s treatment of some of the world’s most vulnerable people,” Edmund Rice Centre director, Phil Glendenning said today.

“The very worst fears of Pacific Island Communities in Australia have been confirmed in the latest IPCC report published last week,” said Pacific Calling Partnership spokesperson Maria Tiimon Chi-fang speaking at a community gathering following the release of the fifth assessment report (AR5) of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The crisis responses necessary and available to refugees will not be an answer to future displacement caused by climate change, said Phil Glendenning - ERC Director, and President of the Refugee Council of Australia - today.

The Edmund Rice Centre has rejected the Government’s decision to divert $375 million dollars of foreign aid - to be allocated to the living expenses of asylum seekers on-shore in Australia.