Let’s celebrate Refugee Week, 15–21 June, which was initiated in Australia 40 years ago and is now observed worldwide.
This year ‘A Million Stories’ is the theme in Australia, recognising that we have issued one million permanent humanitarian visas since 1947.
The Refugee Council of Australia has recorded the stories of many refugees highlighting their significant role in Australia.
For example, Marcus tells of his grandparents’ and parents’ escape from Vietnam in the 1980s and its impact on him as the child of two refugees.
Shankar, a Sri Lankan Tamil talks about his parents’ decision to leave everything they knew to give their children a future. Emee, a Yazidi, escaped with her six daughters from Iraq in 2014 because ISIS were enslaving women and girls.
Diversity is a strength and an essential part of Australia’s heritage. According to SBS News, figures from 2024 show that 31.5 per cent of Australians were born overseas and nearly half (48 per cent) had at least one parent born overseas.
RACS reports many people came to Australia to seek asylum because they were forced to flee brutal regimes.
Australia’s offshore detention camps
Instead of being welcomed, they have been sent to detention camps such as on Nauru where they saw things that no child or adult should ever have to witness.
Some, after more than a decade in Australia, don’t have permanent visas.
Instead, every six months they are forced to reapply for visas, starting them back at ground zero. How would you fare if this were your fate?
How did we get from the 1951 Refugee Convention that Australia signed to where we are today?
This can be sheeted home to authoritarian governments, who quash those who speak the truth, exploit the law against dissent, concentrate power and undermine legal protections, crush opposition before it can organise, and make scapegoats of vulnerable groups to spread fear and division.
How does Australia measure up?
While Australia is recognised as a strong democracy, businessman and public commentator, John Menadue, writes that our human rights record has been seriously eroded.
The UN, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Australian Human Rights Commission itself have documented systematic and worrying erosions of our human rights record across a wide front.
Among these there has been sustained international condemnation of our immigration failures including mandatory and indefinite detention, offshore processing, and the documented cruelty of offshore facilities.
There are limited domestic legal remedies for individuals affected by the Commonwealth when it acts in ways that violate human rights. They must rely on slow and often ineffectual political accountability and UN treaty body review.
The issue of immigration (and particularly immigration by especially-vulnerable groups), has been weaponised by conservative Australians. The 2025 Australian Bureau of Statistics’ General Social Survey of residents aged 15+ from 13,302 households showed declines in many areas of Australian life, including trust and social inclusion.
While 75 per cent of Australians still agree that it is good for Australia to be made up of people from different cultures (‘multiculturalism’) there was a 10 per cent decline since the previous survey in 2020.
The government says new measures in the 2026–27 Budget will cut migration.
Now migrants will be less likely to get a permanent visa, while older, lower-skilled and less-educated migrants will have less chance under changes to Australia’s points system.
According to Crikey’s Bernard Keane, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, in his reply to the 2026-27 budget, wants to create a binary Australia – one for citizens; one for non-citizens – with a blanket exclusion of permanent residents and humanitarian visa holders from 17 Commonwealth benefits.
When governments fail us, it is up to individuals to step up.
Take Barbara, part of the A Million Stories project, for example. She supports many Yazidi refugees living in her local area. She has become a mother for many, a mentor for others and been embraced as a family member by local families.
From 2018, Barbara has worked tirelessly to assist people including twelve Yazidi girls rescued from the horrors of sex slavery.
We may not be able to do as much as Barbara but as a starting point we can reflect on Northern Rivers for Refugees’ vision – think globally, act locally – and contact politicians about Australia’s human rights shortcomings, challenge the status quo, lobby for a human rights act, continue to share stories, challenge stereotypes, and build a more inclusive society.
To support refugee settlement in our area, go to www.nrfr.org.au.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
