Tamil family should be allowed to stay after contributing so much to Australia
It would be a work of staggering callousness for the government to kick out a family of hardworking Tamil migrants who have both endured, and contributed, so much, writes Alan Jones.
Opinion
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The situation of the Tamil family goes from bad to worse for the government — a government that purports to represent the people but refuses to listen to them.
There is an overwhelming anger at the way this family has been treated and the anger is perfectly legitimate.
However, sensing danger, the government has now started wheeling out a few “authorities” to endorse its position of heartlessness, inconsistency and hypocrisy.
More of that in a moment.
A professor of international politics has been cited to argue that the family’s application to be recognised as genuine refugees was “manifestly hopeless”, the reason being that during the civil war in Sri Lanka, the father had travelled between Sri Lanka, Kuwait and Qatar and therefore he couldn’t have had links to the Tamil Tigers, the LTTE, because if that were the case he “would not have been coming and going into Sri Lanka”.
Just what the government wanted to hear.
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Against that, I note a professor of international politics from Deakin University has said that it was not unheard of for Sri Lankans to travel to the Middle East to work during the civil war; and Professor Damien Kingsbury of Deakin University is saying the situation is still dangerous in Sri Lanka for minorities and people with links to the Tamil Tigers.
People still “disappear”.
Peter Dutton, the responsible minister, keeps telling us that these are boat people. And they are.
I wonder in similar circumstances, with his life at risk, would Peter Dutton climb on a boat?
The mother came to this country after witnessing the death of her fiance, who was burned alive with five other men in her village. The executed men were identified as Tamil Tigers.
The civil war lasted 26 years. 100,000 people were killed.
Is this the same government that says no children are in detention?
Are Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton parents?
Forget the way the family was treated in Melbourne detention.
A little girl even forbidden from celebrating her second birthday — in detention. She wasn’t allowed candles on her cake. People are writing to me wondering whether this isn’t Communist China.
Or are all the people in the tiny town of Biloela, 5700 of them, incapable of clear thinking? They’ve mounted a petition signed by 200,000 people.
The father has worked there, in remote Queensland, for three years in an abattoir. Mum has contributed to the local community.
It’s only two months ago we were told that only 12 per cent of a special intake of Middle Eastern refugees who came to Australia in 2017 had jobs. One in five of those said they understood English “not at all”.
This family is working for its keep, the very kind of people we need to integrate west of the Great Dividing Range. But they were dragged from Biloela into detention in Melbourne and then herded up in the middle of the night last week — the little girls were separated from their mother, hauled into a van and dragged onto a plane.
Surely this is terrific stuff in modern Christian compassionate Australia.
But that’s not all.
Then they were carted from a military base in Darwin to Christmas Island in the early hours of Saturday morning. Two little kids, born in Australia. Can you imagine the trauma?
The mother reportedly had to be treated for injuries suffered when she was forcibly removed from detention in Melbourne. Fifty guards allegedly involved in the removal. The mother dragged from a van onto the plane.
And the cost of all this is thousands and thousands of dollars.
Send them back to Sri Lanka, hundreds of thousands of dollars.
A few points can be made.
Remember the 111 asylum seekers brought from Manus Island and Nauru for so-called urgent medical treatment.
Only four have been hospitalised.
Where are the rest?
Presumably, accepted into the community that will be “contaminated” if the Tamil family are allowed to stay.
Is this the same Peter Dutton and the same Immigration Minister David Coleman who personally intervened last year to stop the deportation of two European au pairs?
A former Deputy Secretary of the Immigration Department is on the record saying: “It’s quite clear if you look at the ministerial intervention guidelines, this case meets those guidelines more clearly than the two au pair cases in which Mr Dutton acted within hours.”
Ministerial intervention powers are designed to cater for those cases where a person has not met the legal requirements for a visa but because of humanitarian or national interest grounds, the government intervenes.
The former Deputy Secretary of the Immigration Department, Abul Rizvi, has said the Tamil family’s case clearly meets those requirements.
Mr Rizvi said: “We have a clear contest between human decency and the appropriate use of the ministerial intervention powers, and the Minister’s ego”. The inconsistencies and the inhumanity are breathtaking.
There’s a fairly simple rule here that overrides all others, in my view: “There but for the grace of God!”
There’s been plenty of talk recently about religious freedom, Christianity and compassion.
Peter Dutton trots out the cliche that they’re not genuine refugees; but the so-called quiet Australians have reacted cyclonically.
Given that Mr Dutton and Mr Morrison seem to want to create their own malodorous history, may I remind them again of 1989 and the Tiananmen Square massacre, which took place on June 4.
Mr Hawke was the prime minister.
He didn’t consult the Cabinet before making his famous and tearful promise to allow Chinese students to stay in Australia.
Mr Hawke said when he’d learned the details of Tiananmen Square: “I had no consultation with anyone and when I walked off the dais after the announcement I was told, ‘You cannot do that, Prime Minister’. I said to them, ‘I just did. It’s done.’”
Cabinet documents, released by the National Archives, show substantial resistance to the decision by several government departments including Immigration, the Treasury and Finance.
Hawke was a leader. He led.
There were 16,200 Chinese nationals in the country at the time, not a family of four. They were all granted permanent visas.
Here is a family who have turned tragedy and trauma into triumph, only to have to confront trauma again at the hands of a Liberal government.
These parents have brought two Australians into the world.
They’ve paid their way.
But over and above all of this, we elect governments to represent us, to listen to the people and to lead.
Who is being represented by the pig-headed, hypocritical, inconsistent and heartless treatment of this family? In an ostensibly Christian society, it might be time for a bit of practical Christianity.
Give the family a bit of “au pair” treatment. That might give the government some credibility on this issue.
If your fiance, Prime Minister and Peter Dutton, was burnt alive, would you worry too much how you got out of the joint?
Listen to Alan Jones on the Alan Jones Breakfast Show on 2GB, Monday to Friday, 5.30am to 9am.