A Tamil family fighting to remain in Australia have had their legal fight in the Federal Court adjourned to Friday.
The Federal Circuit Court in Melbourne has delayed the decision in the “interests of justice,” with an interim injunction to restrain the family’s removal from the country.
The future of a Tamil family fighting to remain in Australia rests on their youngest child, who was born in the country.
A succession of courts, including the High Court, have previously found the parents and the eldest child are not refugees and do not qualify for Australia’s protection.
The family had been in long-term immigration detention in Melbourne until last Thursday, when they were put on a plane for deportation to Sri Lanka.
A judge issued a last-minute injunction and the family was taken off the plane when it landed in Darwin, before being sent to Christmas Island hours later.
The injunction is in effect until 4pm on Wednesday.
The hearing will test Tharunicaa’s bid for Australia’s protection, including whether her case should have been assessed by the federal minister.
Whatever the outcome of the court action, the family’s lawyer says their fate will be ultimately be decided Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.
“The only way this family is going to stay, even if the court application is successful, is for the minister to intervene because he is the only one that holds that power,” Carina Ford said earlier this week.
Mr Dutton believes parents Priya and Nadesalingam have unfairly dragged their two young, Australian-born children through drawn-out court appeals in an ill-fated bid to stay in the country.
He said “excessive” appeals had kept them here and now they were complaining about having to leave the life they established in the Queensland town of Biloela.
“People have the ability to appeal. That’s their legal right,” Mr Dutton said on Tuesday.
“But you can’t appeal, refuse the umpire’s decision and then delay and delay and delay through subsequent appeal processes and then say it is unfair that you have been here so long and therefore you have established those connections to the community.
“It doesn’t cut both ways.”
Nadesalingam and Priya came separately to Australia illegally by boat in 2012 and 2013, as a civil war in Sri Lanka raged.
They met in Australia and had two children before settling in Biloela in Queensland were they were embraced by the local community.
Nadesalingam has said his links to Hindu Tamil Tigers insurgents, who battled Sri Lanka’s majority Buddhist government during the war means he’s in danger of persecution if he goes back.
But Mr Dutton argues Nadesalingam had travelled back to Sri Lanka on a number of occasions prior to coming to Australia and he had been unable to convince a succession of courts that he would be in danger.
The minister would not say how quickly the family would be deported to Sri Lanka, if they lost Wednesday’s court battle.
Prayer vigils were held at churches in around Australia to support the family on Tuesday night, with another vigil to be held outside the Federal Court in Melbourne ahead of the hearing on Wednesday.
-more to come
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