Biloela’s Nadesalingam family has celebrated Tharnicaa’s fifth birthday, her first out of detention after they were detained under the previous coalition government.
On the weekend, the now five-year-old girl and her family made their way back to the town in central Queensland.
To celebrate their return, the local residents held a large party on the local grounds.
After an unsuccessful attempt by the Morrison government to deport the family to Sri Lanka, this victory marked the end of a four-year fight to have them restored to their home in Biloela.
At the birthday party on Sunday morning, the family joined a number of other locals, and Tharnicaa and the other youngsters participated in a game of pass the parcel.
Her father Nades participated in a game of limbo with the other players.
Priya and Nades fled the civil conflict in Sri Lanka by boat and made it to Australia, where they applied for asylum.
It was in their new country that they would eventually meet each other and have their two daughters.
In March of 2018, the federal government made an attempt to deport them; however, a last-minute court injunction resulted in the four individuals being held at the detention centre on Christmas Island for a period of two years.
Anthony Albanese stated that the incident was something “Australia can’t be proud of.”
“We are a better country than that, we can do better than that,” he said.
The family is in the process of applying for permanent residency, and Albanese has stated that he does not “see any impediment” to the application being approved.