IT is clearly too much to hope that Federal Member Anne Webster might welcome the news of permanent residence for 19,000 refugees living on temporary visas with her whole heart (“Don’t rock the boats – Webster”, The Guardian, February 17).
She pays lip service to the positives but there is no recognition of the psychological damage that temporary visas have inflicted on our vulnerable refugee friends – damage that research has proven and that we have seen with our own eyes.
No, like Peter Dutton, she focuses on threat and fear-mongering and stirring up panic about people smuggling.
How exactly will giving certainty to refugees who have waited more than 10 years, without security or status, bring the boats to Australia?
In any event, if some do come, they will be turned back. That policy is unchanged.
So many people have come up to me and said, “It is great that Rohullah can at last bring his family out.”
Not one, not one, has approached me to warn, “Those boats will be back now, you wait and see.”
Australians have walked away from the fear and cruelty of past policies, which punished innocent people.
Time for Anne Webster to move on too.
Janet Field
Swan Hill
