"Most of us have contemplated suicide - people don't understand that we live in limbo forever, you know," Abdul Rasuli told me, making a sweeping gesture around the room.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"You don't know what your future is going to be - we have no future; you live in constant trauma and mentally struggle.
It is really miserable, it is tough."
Rasuli, 26, - one of Ballarat's more well-known Afghan Hazara refugees - was speaking to what has, in the last decade, become the defining quality of being a refugee in Australia: indefinite uncertainty.
Indeed, the only one true certainty afforded to refugees granted temporary protection in Australia is the promise of ongoing uncertainty and a life submerged in punitive tragedy.
Almost nine years ago - on 19 July 2013 - former prime minister Kevin Rudd declared that no one who arrived by boat - regardless of their refugee status - would ever be allowed to permanently resettle in Australia.
The extraordinary policy shift - which ran contrary to Australia's international obligations under the United Nations' 1951 Refugee Convention - was given retrospective operation, meaning it also applied to refugees who had already arrived in the country, including children like Rasuli, who'd made the harrowing journey alone.
Since then, the immigration policies of successive coalition governments have seen refugees, who arrived by sea, forcibly and indefinitely incarcerated in offshore detention centres for years or else granted temporary visas that - at their core - deny them what's theirs by international law.
To this day, there remain over 200 refugees incarcerated in detention centres, and, to this day, there remain no pathways to permanent resettlement for the 5000 Afghan refugees, including Rasuli, who arrived by sea.
For the thousands like Rasuli, these circumstances spell a life devoid of ordinary opportunity and one demarcated by ongoing trauma and onerous restrictions around study, work, travel and access to basic government support.
Citing the rhetoric used to justify the 20-year war in Afghanistan, which was imbued with promises of democracy, gender equality and human rights, Rasuli said his people had long found it hard to reconcile Australia's treatment of them as refugees with the attractive image it presents to the world.
"The Australian forces in Afghanistan promised us all those things," he said, referencing human rights and equality. "But when we came to Australia, when we arrived here, the government abused us through detention and denying us permanent residence."
"It was shocking for us; we didn't understand."
Kon Karapanagiotidis, chief executive of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, said the profound contradiction elucidated by Rasuli owed its existence to the politicisation of refugees, years prior, during the Howard era.
"What Howard did was poison the hearts and the compassion of Australians by convincing them that refugees were not deserving of protection because they were Muslim, brown or black and didn't share our way of life," he said.
"He politicised what had been a humanitarian issue since the 1970s and convinced people we need protection from refugees because they didn't share our way of life -because they were Muslim, brown and black."
It's a powerful explanation, shared by many, and one which gives some insight into the enduring damage that divisive and racially charged politics can visit upon the soul of a nation.
It's also an explanation that, in the view of Refugee Action Coalition spokesperson Ian Rintoul, underpins the electoral advantage more recent governments have perceived in increasingly punitive refugee policies.
"The whole point of indefinite detention and the consciously and deliberately cruel circumstances of temporary protection is to deter people who may seek to come to Australia by boat," he said, adding that the harm and human toll occasioned by these policies was "incalculable".
"I wouldn't dare count the number of suicides of people on temporary visas because there is, under the present laws, no possibility of reuniting them with those they've left behind - they'll never get permanent residency to become citizens."
Despite being within weeks of the next federal election, however, refugees and asylum seekers have not - as yet - headlined in the media in the same or similar way as recent elections, suggesting the issue no longer carries the potent force it once did in the minds of Australians.
Noting the stark shift in tone attending the government's approach to Ukrainian refugees, Karapanagiotidis said this might owe to the risk involved in weaponizing refugees as a political issue at this time, given the inevitable comparisons that would be made between the different treatment of Afghan nationals and Ukrainians.
"What would Morrison do if Ukrainian refugees arrived by boat? By his own rhetoric, he'd have to lock them up - but would he, is the question," he said. "When you ask the question, you realise how much he's demonised and dehumanised refugees."
Nevertheless, there's been no marked shift in Australia's policies on refugees with temporary visas. The recent budget did not extend pathways for permanent protection to them, nor flag an end to the detention regime, which will cost taxpayers more than $1.5 billion to sustain in the next financial year alone.
This week, a unanimous senate inquiry into Australia's engagement in Afghanistan published its final report, finding the scale of the dramatically deteriorating humanitarian crisis in the country to constitute the world's worst.
Some 97 per cent of the population, the bipartisan report said, is expected to be plunged into poverty by June, with food security having "all but collapsed" due the force of international sanctions that followed the Taliban's return to power. More than half of the country's population is already in the depths of acute famine, including more than 13 million children.
The report also said the Taliban's indiscriminate killings, persecution of ethnic minorities and the increasingly dire situation for women and girls had continued unabated since the fall of Kabul.
Citing these considerations, and Australia's contribution to the crisis, the report levelled criticism at the government's failure to process the thousands of humanitarian visa applications lodged since the fall of Kabul and the inadequacy of current provision made for Afghan refugees under the program.
It also recommended the government immediately afford permanent protection to all Afghan nationals in Australia on temporary visas.
To that extent, the report brings to the fore a point about Australia's involvment in the 20-year Afghanistan war Rasuli believes most Australians haven't fully grasped - and one which the Australian government continually ignores.
"A lot of people here don't know that the Australian military is the reason in regions like Uruzgan that our people were displaced and needed to leave - because of all the fighting in the villages and towns," he said.
"People don't decide to leave their country unless [they] are really at risk, you know - you must be desperate. And [by] boat is the way you choose when you are really desperate, you know.
"To help Afghanistan, Australia must accept refugees - you caused the trauma, so you have a responsibility to fix it. Ten or 11 years is a bit too long to be using us to deter people - treat us as humans."
Rasuli's final exhortation - that Australia must appreciate the common humanity of refugees and asylum seekers - is as tragic as it damning.
Tragic, because it exposes the unbounded suffering interwoven into Australia's refugee policies. Damning, because it unmasks the sadism that underpinns the life of such policies.
After all, how else to explain the continuation of such policies in circumstances where they no longer provide their touted deterrent value.
If you are seeing this message you are a loyal digital subscriber to The Courier, as we made this story available only to subscribers. Thank you very much for your support and allowing us to continue telling Ballarat's story. We appreciate your support of journalism in our great city.
