Jordon Steele-John (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When Priya and Nades Murugappan arrived in Australia in 2013 it should have been the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. Fleeing persecution and violence, they should have found that safe place across the sea that Australia has been for so many people over so many generations. They should have found our two major political parties, institutions that, while differing about their vision for Australia, were united in recognising the reality of this country—founded on stolen land, which has come to be called Australia—that each generation of people that comes from across the sea calls Australia home and builds a life. They build the country with vibrancy, energy and determination. We become so much stronger as we embrace the diversity. That's what they should have found here. That's what they had every right to expect. After all, the second verse of our national anthem states 'for those who've come across the sea, we've boundless plains to share'. Their two incredible daughters, Kopika and Tharunicaa, should have grown up able to access the very best of education, to make friends, to laugh, love, play and be safe. That's what they should have been able to do. Instead, the reality for this family has been the best part of a decade being mashed, divided, separated and mistreated by a system which was created—and is, to this day, sustained—with the bipartisan support of both major parties and which is designed to dehumanise families like theirs, to subject them to such pain and cause in them such fear that those fleeing war and violence would rather stay in those spaces than attempt to come here and make their life and their home in Australia.

This inhuman, immoral, cruel system of mandatory offshore detention, boat tow-backs, temporary protection visas, and the reduction of human life to numbers and monikers like 'illegal maritime arrival' is now something that both sides of politics have come in on and supported. Regardless of the decision made today—and let's be really clear: the only thing that has changed today is that the Australian government, having bowed to the profound pressure placed upon them by the community, have decided to change the nature of the cage in which this family is kept. The call to return to Biloela goes unheard tonight, yet there is backslapping and celebration in the offices of both Labor and Liberal, when the reality is that the Liberal Party locked them up and would do so again and that, if they arrived here today, the Labor Party would lock them up as well. This is the reality. What is needed is freedom not just for this family but for every human being that was cast off to Manus and Nauru—permanent protection, permanent security, and the ability to live your life and build your home here in Australia.