Thursday, 18 March 2021

Refugees and asylum seekers

Dr READ (Brunswick) (09:57): Thank you to Refugee Voices, who on Saturday night held a fundraising and welcome dinner for refugees recently released from detention in Melbourne. In particular I thank organiser Ahmad Hakim and Kurdish refugee Esmat Ansari, who cooked for us in the Coburg town hall, and Hazara refugee Talib Hussain, who played a traditional instrument, the tanpura. Talib now works in construction to support his family, who are still in Pakistan. He has no idea when he will ever get to see them. We also heard great music from Aboriginal artist Anna Liebzeit and speeches from Mohammad Daghagheleh and from recently released refugee Mohammed Imran.

After too many years in detention, most of the men flown to Melbourne under the medevac law and then detained, first at the Mantra hotel and then the Park Hotel—some of them for up to two years—have been released. There are still some there, and I look forward to their release soon. They have no support from the federal government, but community members are giving them a place to stay and helping them get on their feet. I want to thank and acknowledge the many Melbourne community members who are showing way more heart than our federal government, which is providing very little support. And on that note, I urge our state government to offer more support to this cohort and to other refugees living in Victoria and unable to work. I hope these releases are another step towards the end of our inhumane policies towards asylum seekers, which have long been one of our nation’s greatest causes of shame.