(2/3) My dad came here by boat in 1999 as an asylum seeker. He was detained on Christmas Island for a few months, but back then the policies were much better for people seeking asylum, so he was able to file for a Family Reunion visa four years later, and my mother, sisters and I were able to join him in Australia.
If the laws back then had been as they are now, that visa wouldn’t have been possible, and so when we needed to seek safety, we would have had to choose between making the very difficult . . .