The drama of the attempted expulsion of the Biloela Tamil family highlights Australia's toxic immigration policy.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
It was not always thus and there was bipartisan support for the governments of the 1970s and 1980s to assist refugees fleeing the Vietnam War and then the political repression of China after the Tiananmen Square Massacre.
The Labor Paul Keating government introduced mandatory in 1992 and the Howard government hypercharged the issue politically to win the 2001 election after the Tampa Crisis and the September 11 attacks.
Ever since the Coalition has used an increasingly hard-line position on refugees to wedge Labor, always fearful of how the issue plays out in the electorate.
Tony Abbott's infamous "stop the boats" slogan was crude but highly effective in destroying the Rudd-Gillard government's credibility on the issue (the LNP's refusal to countenance the Malaysia solution was a cynical move for political gain) and his newly installed Immigration minister Scott Morrison handled the issue by refusing to publish any information about "on water activities". Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton is continuing the hard-line stance.
Up to now he has been assisted in demonisation those stuck in the hell of Nauru and Manus Island by the difficulty of talking to those people and our inability to humanise them.
That was all changed by Priya and Nadesalingam, also known as Nades, who fled Sri Lanka during the civil war because of persecution of the Tamil people.
The couple and their two children settled in Biloela, near Gladstone, where they got jobs and settled into the community.
However, the Department of Home Affairs said the family had been comprehensively assessed a number of times and had consistently been found not to be genuine refugees.
That may be true, but no-one can look at their photos and then put their hands on their hearts and say "damn them, they must go".
The family forces us to consider what it means to be Australians and hopefully re-open the immigration debate in a way that doesn't require us to be fearful or resort to slogans.