Priya Nadesalingam has spoken out against the Albanese government’s immigration detention bill, saying her family’s return to Biloela would have been “impossible” without access to a mobile phone while detained.
Nadesalingam, alongside her husband, Nades, and their two young daughters, was taken from the Queensland town in March 2018 and placed in immigration detention while the then Coalition government sought to have the Tamil asylum seekers deported to Sri Lanka.
The family was held in the Christmas Island detention centre for two years, before being moved to community detention in Perth in mid-2021.
The Nadesalingams were released and returned to Biloela in 2022 after the new Labor government fulfilled an election promise to allow them to stay in Australia, with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, saying at the time he was “proud” of the outcome.
But Nadesalingam said that had the government’s proposed laws been in force at the time her family’s fate could have been different.
“It would have been impossible to do anything if I didn’t have access to my phone [in detention],” she told Guardian Australia.
“It was because of the phone that I was able to find my way back to Biloela, it was how I was able to maintain contact with supports and lawyers, and to let people know my daughter needed to be hospitalised.
“We needed phones to effectively communicate with our lawyers, especially as some things happened very quickly.”
The home affairs minister, Tony Burke, introduced the prohibiting items in detention bill last week, alleging that “there have been incidents of criminals in detention facilities using encrypted messaging services to run drug trafficking and other organised crime activities”.
The bill includes safeguards that if a communication device is confiscated, detainees must be given “alternative means of communication” to obtain legal advice, contact family and friends, or communicate on political matters.
Burke said this would include an “alternative device until such time as their device is returned”.
He said the bill “does not establish a blanket prohibition against possession or use of mobile phones in immigration detention” and devices would only be confiscated “when they are being used in a way” that would pose a risk.
But Nadesalingam warned the law would worsen detainees’ mental health.
“These sort of decisions by the government only puts more stress on people’s mental health. For many people in detention, their mental health deteriorates and a phone is their only contact with their families and the outside world.”
The bill forms one part of a trio of bills, expected to pass after the Coalition agreed a deal with the government, that also include provisions to create powers for the Australian government to pay third countries to receive non-citizens and criminal penalties for non-citizens who refuse to cooperate with their own deportation.
The deportation bill also gives the Australian government power to ban new visa applications from countries that do not accept involuntary removals from Australia, which the Greens have labelled a “Trump-style travel ban”.
Simone Cameron, a lawyer and advocate for the Nadesalingam family, said the proposed laws were “horrifying” and communicating by phone was essential to the campaign to free the family, and also to maintaining their health.
She said it was “hard to imagine how anybody’s most basic human rights could be upheld if they’re not able to have access to mobile phones”.
“Any sort of effective advocacy for people who seek asylum relies on advocates to be able to tell the public who these people are, because they’re locked away and out of sight,” Cameron said.
“So these changes are quite frightening and absolutely barbaric.”
Journalist and author Rebekah Holt, who covered the family’s campaign and worked with Priya to turn her story into a book, said the bill was “morally repugnant on a human rights level”.
In 2022, Labor gained political capital “from looking generous to Priya and her family”, Holt said.
“Now they’re trying to present people who will be almost exactly in the same position [in immigration detention] as being problematic.”
