Progress made on returning Sri Lankan family to Biloela, Jim Chalmers says

Interim Home Affairs Minister Jim Chalmers says substantial progress has been made on Labor’s promise to get the Murugappan family home to Biloela as soon as possible.

Substantial progress has been made on getting a Sri Lankan asylum seeker family home to Biloela according to Treasurer and interim Home Affairs Minister Jim Chalmers.

Dr Chalmers, speaking in Canberra, confirmed he had done work on Labor’s promise to get the Murugappan family home to Biloela as soon as possible.

“Obviously there are a series of steps that I would need to appropriately take in order to give effect to our long-held view that that family must get home to Biloela, to the warm embrace of one of the most wonderful Queensland town,” he said.

Labor has promised to return the Murugappan family to Biloela. Picture: Instagram

The family, Priya and Nadesalingam Murugappan, arrived in Australia by boat before settling in Biloela and having daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa.

But they were later detained on Christmas Island in August 2019 after earlier detention on the mainland as they sought refugee status in the courts, before being sent to Perth after the younger child suffered a blood infection.

Dr Chalmers said he was “sick and tired” of Queensland, where he is from, being caricatured a certain way when it “comes to these issues” and said it “warms the heart” to see the way the town had fought for the Murugappan’s to be settled in Biloela.