Award-winning author and refugee advocate Behrouz Boochani has used a speech at Parliament House to call for a royal commission into Australia's immigration detention regime, and urged the government to urgently abolish visas that only offer temporary protection to asylum seekers.
The Kurdish writer, who was detained on Manus Island for six years after fleeing Iran in 2013, also backed a Greens bill to immediately evacuate roughly 140 refugees and asylum seekers held offshore on Nauru and Papua New Guinea and said Labor should "be brave" and "do the right thing" and support the move.
