In June 2022, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese met the Nadesalingams, known internationally as the Biloela family. The PM had been in office for less than a month and the family, granted their freedom by his government, had been back at home in Biloela, in Central Queensland, for just a week after four harrowing years of imprisonment in three different detention facilities at the behest of the previous Liberal National Coalition.
The family thanked the PM and gave him a “Biloela” stubby holder emblazoned with a cockatoo. The bird is the town’s symbol. Biloela is an Aboriginal word for cockatoo.
Albanese took the stubby holder back to the Lodge where it was spotted days later on a coffee table by journalist Niki Savva, who mentioned it in her book Bulldozed.
That was nearly two years ago. Ever since, lawyers in the immigration sector have been waiting for clear indications that Labor plans to do more than effect tokenistic change for asylum seekers who are in the same situation the Biloela family found themselves in back in 2018.
While no-one expected Labor to completely excise the hysterical and haunted rhetoric about the loss of control of our borders (which is more than 20 years old but nonetheless is trotted out every time a rickety boat of asylum seekers even sneezes near Australia), there were some clean goals the party could have kicked and hasn’t.
After observing the extraordinary support the Biloela family found in the Australian community, it would have been the obvious time for the new government, stubby holder in hand, to announce it was taking steps to ensure no child or minor would ever be held in an onshore immigration detention facility for an extended period again.
Countries like Sweden have clear rules ensuring minors can’t be held in immigration detention for more than 72 hours. Something like that would have been a tidy fix, still leaving the government the power to deport families, but not to torture children for more than a long weekend.
But Labor chose not to.
One of the possible reasons the government hasn’t taken the step of ruling out detaining children is that it wants to leave wriggle-room if the opposition manages to successfully animate a golem built entirely out of racist talkback radio callers reciting Howard-era talking points. Which is effectively what happened last year when the High Court declared indefinite detention to be illegal.
But, instead of telling the opposition to stop embarrassing itself, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil’s next step was to pull off an incredible bit of community building by successfully uniting the Greens and Liberals in opposing Labor’s hastily proposed deportation bill.
For lawyers watching, this has not filled them with confidence that the most shameful days of Australia’s refugee policies are behind us.
The lawyer who represented the Biloela family, Carina Ford, acknowledged that a situation like the one the Biloela family faced could arise again. Ford said that asylum seekers who arrived in Australia many years ago, have been granted bridging visas, found work and started families, all while languishing in various glacial, much criticised visa application cul de sacs, could find themselves detained, with their only hope being that the minister decides to grant them a visa.
To that end, earlier this month, Ford, who is also chair of the Law Council’s migration law committee, warned the Labor government that its problematic deportation bill “could see people rounded up to be removed”.
“This bill has huge ramifications. It’s very draconian and I’m actually a little shocked that it’s been presented,” Ford told Crikey after appearing at the Senate inquiry.
“[Under this bill] the Biloela family would have been removed or forced to sign documents that would require them to arrange for their children’s departure.”
Ford said there were so many other people with Australian citizen children.
“The reality is the [visa] process has taken so long that children have been born and they’re now 10 years old, and they’re now Australian citizens,” she said.
Alison Battisson, a human rights lawyer specialising in representing those refugees held in immigration detention echoed the unease among lawyers in the sector two years after Labor’s election.
“Overseeing and attempting to even reinforce a system still stacked against people needing assistance is a betrayal of Labor’s base,” Battisson said, adding that Labor is effectively attempting to “out-Dutton Dutton”.
Given the events of the past 20 years, the hardest sell a policy adviser in Canberra will likely make is that constructing a prison, be it in a Melbourne hotel or illegally on a remote Melanesian island, isn’t a solution for every refugee issue Australia faces. But it’s well past time the country released its death grip on that part of its identity. Otherwise Albanese may need to revise where he stores his Biloela stubby holder, lest it become as embarrassing as Morrison’s “I Stopped These” trophy.
Does Labor need to change Australia’s asylum seeker policy? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
