Part 7: Does Australia’s asylum seeker policy actually work?

The pandemic put everyone in limbo. For the first time, many Australians understood what it meant to be stranded, unable to cross borders, separated from loved ones. The federal government said we were ‘all in this together’ – but what about the refugees in Temporary? And what’s ahead for them? Sisonke Msimang interviews Sarah Dale, the director of the Refugee Advice and Casework Service, to find out

In part 7 of Temporary we meet Hani. Back in 2013, with Operation Sovereign Borders, the Australian government launched an outright war on asylum seekers, condemning 30,000 people seeking safety to mandatory detention and temporary protection, leaving thousands of people like Hani, a young poet from Somalia, caught in the middle. Years after the harsh deterrence policies were implemented, we ask: have they actually worked?

One family. All devout pacifists, they all fled the same dangers and all of them are recognised refugees in Australia. The mother and children were resettled from overseas and now have permanent protection. But their father arrived by boat. He lives in anxious uncertainty, enduring an opaque reapplication process that could result in his being torn away from them

In part 5 of Temporary we meet Arman, whose claim for asylum was rejected because the Australian government thought it was safe for him to return to Afghanistan. This is no longer the government’s view, yet due to the way the appeal system works, the decision still stands – and Arman has nowhere to turn. His only chance to stay in Australia is if Peter Dutton personally intervenes

Every one of the 30,000 asylum seekers in Australia’s ‘legacy caseload’ was detained. The average time spent in detention is 564 days but some people have been detained for more than a decade. In this episode of Temporary, we meet Kumar, who was moved from detention centre to detention centre for over three years

In part three of the Temporary podcast we meet Elaheh, who had to suddenly flee Iran, not realising she might never see her family again. Now a recognised refugee in Australia with a young son, her visa’s restrictions dictate whether her son will ever meet the strong women who raised her

In episode two of Temporary we continue Zaki’s story. Labelled an ‘illegal maritime arrival’, how did he negotiate hunger, the Sydney property market and a visa that wouldn’t let him work or study in Australia to become an award-winning student? Part 1: How Australia put 30,000 people in limbo A legal limbo without end: the people who came by boat but never found home in Australia

In the first part of the Temporary podcast we meet Zaki, who fled a Taliban death warrant when he was a teenager to find somewhere safe. Instead, he found himself impounded in the politics of fear that Australian leaders have been stoking for decades. He is one of 30,000 refugees and asylum seekers in the ‘legacy caseload’, kept silent by a system that holds permanent protection out of reach. We know the stories of Manus Island and Nauru, but what about the people stuck here in our midst? Part 2: No right to study, no right to work A legal limbo without end: the people who came by boat but never found home in Australia

The stories of people seeking asylum are supposed to end. But in Australia, people who arrive by boat are seldom able to finish their story. This new eight-part narrative podcast reveals the stories of refugees trapped in a cycle of uncertainty