CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
A government thats spends tens of thousands of dollars a day to not show any form of compassion to a refugee family who have been through hell and back within the Australian immigration system, has this week questioned the moral compass of the Queensland state government.
Prime Minister Morrison has continued in his vilification of the state for refusing to allow a young woman to attend her father’s funeral due to border closures.
He says Australia is in danger of losing its humanity during the pandemic.
A 26-year-old from Canberra was denied permission to attend the Brisbane funeral of her father, who died from cancer last week, but was escorted by authorities to a private viewing after the service.
Queensland’s CHO, Dr Jeannette Young, told reporters permission to attend the service had been denied because funerals were very risky environments for the spread of coronavirus and the state had taken a deliberately risk-averse position. Because, remember all those wedding and funeral clusters that happened after Peter Dutton and Brad Hazzard let that big boat full of COVID-19 cases disembark in the middle of Sydney.
However, according to both Dutton and Morrison, keeping families separated in the name of tough safety-driven policy is unfamiliar and cruel.
These comments from the former Immigration Minister Morrsion and the current Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, show a possibly 180 degree turn around in their views towards a family unit.
In the last three years close to half a billion dollar has been spent by the Federal Government in their efforts to prevent a young Tamil family who had settled in the meatworks town of Biloela stay in the country with their Australian born children, despite a tireless campaign from the regional community to get them released from detention.
Dutton also refused to allow the mother of a Kurdish Iranian asylum seeker who committed suicide on Nauru to attend his funeral in Brisbane, until a court intervened.
It is unclear what the Australian government defines as ‘cruel’ given the fact that there is currently two little girls trapped in offshore detention that has left them with rotting teeth and severe behaviour issues, for no other reason except for the unfortunate colour of their skin.
The Department of Home Affairs has previously been investigated for its treatment of Australian-born toddler Tharunicaa, and her four-year-old sister Kopika.
The younger girl’s mouth had been swollen with infection for months, with her emerging teeth visibly rotten and broken, due to severe vitamin deficiencies caused by poor diet and lack of sunlight.
The breastfed child was forced onto prison food after her mother stropped producing milk due to stress.
Before Dutton reluctantly allowed the family medical treatment last year, Tharunicaa’s mother Priya had been forced to pre-chew her daughter’s food to feed her like an animal.
Until being moved to the newly re-opened Christmas Island detention centre last year, at the cost of $200 million dollars, Tharunicaa had been locked up at a Melbourne detention prison with her family since 2017, when they were forcibly removed from their home in central Queensland by a Border Force tact team at dusk, 12 hours after her parent’s bridging visa expired due to a clerical error.
Morrison has dismissed the desperate pleas from the public to reunite this family with their hometown of Biloela as “Twitter public sentiment”.
MORE TO COME.
