Australia's new government said on Friday it would give temporary visas to a Sri Lankan asylum seeker family held in immigration detention since 2019, a step towards closure of one of the country's most controversial migration cases.
The Tamil family of four, Priya and Nadesalingam Murugappan and their two daughters, have been a cause celebre since being detained in the rural Australian town where they settled years earlier. The family was taken into the country's offshore detention system, designed to deter asylum seekers from entering by boat.
Amid growing public anger, the conservative government moved the family to mainland Australia last year when the younger daughter, Tharnicaa, needed urgent medical care for sepsis linked to untreated pneumonia. The family has since been in community detention onshore.
