Well, Mr Turnbull, you are quite wrong.

Look at the evidence!

TPVs have provided customers for the people smuggling trade in the past, and are doing so right now. Three of the families now incarcerated in an Indonesian detention centre have fathers recognised as refugees and given TPVs. One man recognised by Australia as a refugee and given a TPV, after seven years family separation heeded the cries of his children and went back to help his family. He was imprisoned and narrowly escaped, then gathered up his family and ran to Indonesia where he has waited three years to be recgnised by UNHCR as a refugee. There he cannot work, his children have no schooling but they are fed and housed. The others have similar stories.

At least two of the families on Christmas Island are former TPV holders who went back to help their families and then have tried to return. This is what the TPV achieved. Men and women separated from their children and their spouses for years and years while the Howard government prevaricated. When they could bear the separation no longer they left Australia only to find the same persecution from which they fled and have to run again. These five are but a sample of the misery created by the vicious TPV system- there are others.

Politicians may not understand how it feels not to see their children and spouses for seven years, but ordinary Australians know how important family is. They know the desperation which causes people to put their lives at risk when their families need them

353 men, women and children - but mostly women and children - drowned on the SIEV-X in 2001 - because of the TPV. They risked their lives to rejoin the fathers and husbands which the Howard /Ruddock TPV policy denied to them.

Please Stone and Turnbull: enough!

Pamela Curr
Campaign Co-ordinator
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre