Peter Khalil (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Australia's closed international border has been so hard on many Australians, with families being separated. Australia is a very diverse multicultural nation, and Australians have family all over the world. I do. I've supported Australia's border measures as a health measure during this pandemic, but in many cases of family being separated I've been shocked by the lack of compassion, consistency and common sense. Hundreds if not thousands of people have reached out to me over the past 18 months since Australia's border closed, because they're unable to secure an exemption despite very compelling circumstances. One case that is particularly shocking is that of the Kenny family in my electorate whose seven-year-old son, Oliver, has been undergoing treatment for medulloblastoma. It started with vomiting, and for two months his parents shunted him between GPs and hospital trying to find the answers. Doctors found a 32 millimetre tumour on his brain, which had produced two small pea-like tumours on his spine. Medulloblastoma, a word most seven-year-olds can't pronounce, is life-threatening and requires intensive surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. It is a fast-growing and aggressive cancer. About 25 kids are diagnosed each year. Without medical intervention, Oliver could have had as little as two weeks to live. This is every parent's worst nightmare, and it was made much more difficult with Melbourne's lockdowns. While we complain about not seeing friends and family, not being able to go out, for the Kennys this has meant separation from their support systems, both friends and family, and the worry of the devastating implications of catching COVID and what that would do to Oliver.

Despite all this, Oliver's grandparents, who live in the UK, have been knocked back four times in the last year trying to get to Australia to support the family and Oliver—four times. They are both double-vaccinated with booster shots and are willing to comply with all quarantine requirements and costs. If Oliver's case doesn't qualify for compassionate circumstances, what is the point of even having these exemptions? It's mind-boggling. This is despite his family and his social worker at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne pleading with Border Force and saying that the emotional and practical support that his grandparents would provide to Oliver and the family would be critical. Thankfully, Oliver's medical team believe he may now be in remission. However, his grandparents are still hoping to travel to Australia to provide that support to the family. I've written, at the Kenny family's request, to the Australian Border Force and so has Oliver's medical team. Oliver's father, Kirk, has recently started a petition that has attracted thousands of supporters.

This is just one story of probably many thousands of stories, and hopefully we'll hear fewer and fewer such stories with our borders opening up and our high vaccination rates. I hope that, as our international border reopens, we also reopen to each other. Australia is one federated nation. We are no longer separate colonies. This Christmas, despite Australia being projected to meet the 80 per cent vaccination threshold, there will still be many families who are still stuck overseas and locked out from returning home, locked out from seeing their relatives and their loved ones. I feel for these families. People will be flying overseas, but someone in Melbourne won't be allowed to go to Perth. It speaks to the failure of national leadership in this place. We're all at fault: state premiers and territory chief ministers but also this place and the national leadership in here, our Prime Minister, our ministers, our government. I can't imagine Prime Minister Hawke or Prime Minister Keating or Prime Minister Howard vacating the field the way that this Prime Minister has done during this pandemic. I can't imagine any of those great prime ministers letting the state premiers dictate Australia's response to a global pandemic and standing for inconsistent state border rules: looking after their own people, yes, but not thinking about the bigger picture of the nation. I ask: how long will our Prime Minister let this go on for?