By Katina Curtis
Three members of the Murugappan family who were detained on Christmas Island after being told they could not stay in their home town of Biloela have been granted three-month bridging visas, meaning the parents can work and the children can attend school in Perth.
The Tamil asylum seeker family was reunited in Perth last week after Immigration Minister Alex Hawke used his powers to move them off Christmas Island, where they had been since August 2019, into community detention.
Immigration Minister Alex Hawke has given the Murugappan family three-month bridging visas.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen/Supplied
On Wednesday Mr Hawke agreed to an application under a section of the Migration Act that allows him to grant visas in the public interest.
“This decision allows three members of the family to reside in the Perth community on bridging visas while the youngest child’s medical care, and the family’s legal matters, are ongoing. The fourth family member’s visa status is unchanged,” Mr Hawke said in a statement.
“The family will continue to have access to health care, support services, housing and schooling in the Perth community.”
Nadesalingam and Priya Murugappan fled Sri Lanka separately, coming by boat to Australia in 2012 and 2013 respectively. They met and married in Australia and had two daughters – Kopika, 6, and Tharnicaa, 4 – after settling in Biloela. But along the way, courts and tribunals all the way up to the High Court have ruled the parents don’t have refugee status.
Distressing images of Tharnicaa and Kopika in a Christmas Island hospital room reignited public debate about the family’s situation, leading Coalition MPs to press the family’s case with Mr Hawke.
Priya, Nades and Kopika have been given the three-month bridging visas, valid until September 2021. They are not in community detention, but Tharnicaa is, which ensures the family can stay in the house the government placed them in after leaving Christmas Island while she continues her weeks of medical care.
“Today’s news is another huge step in the long journey home for Priya and her family, but still there is no certain pathway home to Bilo,” friend of the family Angela Fredericks said in a statement.
“While we welcome Priya, Nades and Kopika being granted bridging visas, we wonder what precisely is the minister’s objective in denying little Tharni one. This family must stay together, and they need to be back in Biloela as soon as humanly possible.”
Before the decision was made to move the family off Christmas Island, former High Court chief justice Sir Gerard Brennan slammed the “deliberate cruelty” inflicted on the children as he warned Australia must not harm the two young girls to punish their parents.
“Tharnicaa has committed no offence; she presents no danger. Cruelty is being inflicted upon her to punish her parents who came by boat without a visa and thus to discourage others from breaching one of our immigration policies,” he wrote in a letter to The Sydney Morning Herald.
Mr Hawke made the decision last week to take the family out of detention on Christmas Island on compassionate grounds. But he said the family’s immigration status had not changed and they were still “unlawful non-citizens” who had been on a pathway to deportation before a court granted injunctions.
“If people are not found to be owed protection obligations, the expectation is, where is it safe to do so, that they return home and that remains the Australian government’s position,” he said.
“Sri Lanka is safe. People are returning from all around the world to Sri Lanka, Sinhalese, Tamil, people have returned from Australia to Sri Lanka.”
The family currently has an appeal with the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and a special leave application before the High Court. Mr Hawke is also considering a “bar lift” application that if approved would allow Tharnicaa to apply for a humanitarian or safe haven enterprise visa.
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Katina Curtis is a political reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based at Parliament House in Canberra.
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2021-06-23 07:22:13Z
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