As three-year-old Tharnicaa Murugappan lay in a hospital bed with sepsis and pneumonia, her family hoped it might be enough to spur a bit of compassion in Canberra, and bring an end to their more than 1000 days in immigration detention.
This morning, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews tried to put the genie in the bottle — after days of talk about overseas resettlement, she returned to the Coalition’s familiar terrain of stopping the boats.
“Quite frankly, I am not going to have people dying trying to come to Australia by sea on my watch,” she said, after Sunrise’s David Koch asked why the government was “being so mean” to the family.
You lose Sunrise, you lose the country. The “Biloela family” provided a human face to Australia’s stagnant refugee debate, so long dominated by scary images of people smugglers and deaths at sea. Beloved by their local community in the central Queensland mining town, their case has attracted sympathy from across the political spectrum. And now, there’s a growing sense of disquiet among Coalition ranks about the family’s plight.
Is there a softening afoot?
All week, there’s been enough of a collective hum coming from the Coalition ranks — a mixture of rumour, anonymous “concerned” MPs, and backgrounding — to suggest there may be a resolution to the family’s ordeal.
From Coalition MPs, the public messaging has been contradictory — a reflection, perhaps, of the government’s own internal conflict over the family’s fate. On Tuesday, Andrews said the government was “going through a process of investigating a range of resettlement options”.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison immediately interjected to say that process applied to all cohorts, not specifically the Biloela family.
That afternoon, Foreign Minister Marise Payne suggested the government was looking at resettlement options in New Zealand or the United States. That was news to the family’s lawyers. It was also news to New Zealand, with Immigration Minister Kris Faafoi saying Australia had never approached New Zealand about the resettlement plan.
By Wednesday, Liberal MPs were privately pushing the government to do something for the family. But the backlash had also started. Attorney-General Michaelia Cash warned about the “consequences of blinking”, arguing people smugglers were watching the government like hawks waiting for a sign of compassion.
This morning, Andrews confirmed the family would not have access to resettlement in New Zealand, and continued to double down on the government’s old messaging about stopping the boats.
Will a minister, or politics help?
Andrews, along with Immigration Minister Alex Hawke, can intervene at any time and allow the family to return to Biloela. But the home affairs minister appears to have nailed her colours to the mast this morning.
That leaves Hawke, who is currently reviewing two briefs he must consider before deciding whether to lift the bar and allow them to apply for a visa. It’s unclear where Hawke will land here, and when. As assistant home affairs minister in the Turnbull government he was something of a hardliner — now he has four children under six, and there’s hope that could spur him to change the government’s mind.
Meanwhile, there’s politics to factor in too. The Murugappan family has support from people like Alan Jones. Keeping them on Christmas Island has cost the government over $6 million. And Biloela is in Flynn, a Central Queensland seat Labor has in its sights. Ken O’Dowd, the popular local LNP member is resigning. He too has offered his support to the family.
Tharnicaa’s medical evacuation underscores the lack of quality care in detention, and makes the case for keeping them on Christmas Island while their court cases progress seem absurd. But if anything forces the government to change its mind, it may just be that the politics of locking them up no longer make sense.
This government is appalling. Let’s all act to ensure their time comes to an end at the next election.
One can only hope. I have no idea who keeps voting these awful people in…..but the opposition also needs to step up their game.
Would that be the “Labor Opposition” which legislated, shortly before its deserved demise in 2013, that no asylum seeker arriving by boat would ever be settled in this country?
The whole asylum seeker business is an ongoing disgrace to our country. In particular, the treatment of this family, the midnight raid on their home by armed men in uniform, the attempt to deport the family by stealth, again in the middle of the night, the locking away at vast expense in a jail on an isolated island, with heavily armed guards dogging the footsteps of a three-year-old because she might escape, the repeated refusal to effectively treat that same three-year-old for a life-threatening ailment, and so on, and so on, might possibly happen in a dictatorship. That it’s happened in Australia, supposedly a free country where the rights of the individual are supposedly paramount (unless, of course, you’re in the wrong demographic) is beyond belief – until you consider how it’s come about.
Then, to try to excuse this litany of horrors by saying that “we have to be strong so the boats don’t start up again”, or something like, only adds more shame to our disgraceful conduct as a nation. It’s good to see that concerned people are demonstrating, although they’ll want to be careful in NSW; the anti-protest laws here are probably fiercer than anywhere else except Tasmania. But it isn’t enough. It won’t move these intransigent ideologues.
External pressure for our so-called “allies” might help. I do hope that President Biden, or someone, calls it out at the G7 meeting. But I’m not holding my breath.
“from our so-called allies”, not “for – sorry.
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day…”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
“[W]hoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
-Voltaire
From Afghanistan to Christmas Island.
BTW, Karen Andrews is no longer taking calls. You want to ‘chat’ about the tortured family with the abused 3 year old, you must write to Kazza.
Abject cowardice is plain sight (if you read Bruce Haigh, that is).
Well I’ve written.
I’ve had occasion to deal with “kazza” before. She is a waste of space then and still is – unfortunately she holds an electorate that Mickey Mouse could win if they were LNP.
Voltaire, such a mind, how did he know we would one day have this LNP.
She’s probably just a lying cow in any case.
Detention is really a cruel way to treat another human being. I’m surprised anyone in parliament is comfortable with that. It’s cruelty for cruelty’s sake.
Why are you “surprised” – by their works can you know them.’
I think Morrison thinks that keeping the Nadesan family in CI is a vote winner for him. Everything he does is to maximise his votes. There is never any consideration for Australia or its people. When the country was burning he disappeared to Hawaii. It did not even occur to him that he should be with his people to handle the disaster. Instead he said “I don’t hold a hose”. What a terrible human being.
Did you mean “maximise his votes and his personal wealth”? Don’t forget that the prosperity gods only love the very richest donors – rather like the liberal party.
He literally re-opened the facility, at massive cost to the taxpayer, for the sake of imprisoning that one family.