Josh Wilson (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is so welcome that we are finally doing away with the senseless, punishing limbo that has been inflicted on so many through temporary protection and safe haven visas. For 10 years, there have been thousands of people who came to Australia seeking protection and refuge locked in a state of uncertainty, deprived of access to basic services and achingly separated from family and, in many cases, separated from their children.

In the week before the 2019 election, I met with a group of men who were being squeezed in that terrible Kafkaesque vice of irrelevant rules and pointless deprivation. It is awful that another four years have passed. It is enormously welcome that today we are delivering on our commitment to end that punishing limbo. I thank the Minister for Home Affairs and, in particular, the immigration minister for their work and dedication to achieving that commitment in a careful but urgent manner. I also want to acknowledge the incredible effort by the refugee and asylum seeker support community in my electorate and around Australia for years and years. Your advocacy has been absolutely vital—your work in supporting the lives and hopes of people who have suffered through the TPV and SHEV nightmare has been a lifesaving labour of love.

From today, thousands of people—thousands of lives caught in a harmful paralysis—are finally able to begin again on a path towards inclusion, reconnection and belonging.