This one family changed the way Aussies view asylum seekers.
You think you know their whole story. But you have been told a lie.
The Nadesalingam family shot into the headlines when they were forcibly removed from their rural Queensland town of Biloela and were almost deported. Twice. The town was left shocked, and a grassroots community campaign sprung up, fighting, rallying, and organising to bring them home to Biloela.
You’ve heard this part of the story before. A good family with two Australian born daughters unfairly ripped apart from their regional town. A town that wants them to stay, and a town that needs workers like them. It tugs at your heartstrings.
But there’s so much more to their story.
Ethnic cleansing
Priya and Nades both fled a war-torn Sri Lanka, a country divided by ethnic groups and religion. A civil war lasting decades saw ethnic Tamils like Priya and Nades living with violence and bloodshed daily. During the civil war many Tamils fled on boats seeking asylum. But Australia suspected local Tamils of supporting terrorists, and blocked foreign aid via third parties that didn’t go directly to the Sri Lankan government.
They just keep moving the line
Priya and Nades arrived in Australia less than a year apart from each other, but their visa application processes were actually different. One could apply for a permanent visa. The other could only apply for a 3 or 5 year visa, after which they would need to make their case for why they were still in danger if they were sent back to their country of origin. It’s never simple or straightforward.
“Such compassionate, riveting and clarifying storytelling of a shameful saga in Australian life, with new insights that will leave you staggered.”
— Benjamin Law, Writer & Broadcaster
False reports
When assessing asylum seeker claims, there’s one document that the assessors have to take into account. It’s a report prepared by DFAT on the current situation and status of the asylum seeker’s country of origin. There’s one on Sri Lanka that would have been taken into account for Priya’s asylum seeker claim. And it’s vastly inaccurate.
Privatising humanity
Much of our detention facilities and border surveillance is outsourced by our government to contracted companies. The detention centre in Melbourne as well as the one on Christmas Island that the Nadesalingam family were held in are both essentially run by a private corporation called SERCO, and they couldn’t even get a blender to make food for their baby for months.
“The Australian immigration system is designed to dehumanise refugees and reduce them to numbers. Listening to this podcast helps us to see the humanity of refugees, and how each refugee has a story and each story is a tragedy.”
— Behrouz Boochani, Writer, Journalist & Human Rights Defender
Politicising asylum seekers
It seems almost normal and expected for our politicians to talk about asylum seekers as “queue jumpers” or “job stealers”, but this wasn’t always the case. And in fact, the shift to this type of language has been done incredibly deliberately to stop Australians from sympathising with asylum seekers like Priya and Nades.
The future for asylum seekers
Despite the success of the Nadesalingam family’s story, their outcome is unfortunately quite the anomaly. In fact, most of the systems and powers that enabled all that happened to this family are still around. In fact, Australia, it seems, doesn’t want people like them to even have a chance of staying.
Does this all sound pretty hectic?
It certainly is a lot. That’s where this podcast comes in. We step out the Nadesalingam family’s journey over six episodes, and show you all these forces that are responsible for what happens to them. No prior knowledge required.
A little about us
Hello, Thinesh and Jay here. Thinesh first approached Jay back in 2020 about doing a podcast story on a rural Queensland town rallying behind this one Eelam Tamil asylum seeker family. You don’t usually see ‘rural Queensland’, and ‘advocating for asylum seekers’ in the same sentence. There had to be a story worth telling here. But being Eelam Tamil himself, Thinesh knew there was even more here than this initial juxtaposition.
With Jay’s prior podcast production experience exploring Asian Australian identity, and backed by the Jesse Cox Audio Fellowship, this was a story the pair couldn’t say no to. Years later, we’re excited to bring you the definitive podcast on the Nadesalingam family, and everything that’s impacted their journey.
Not just two guys talking into a mic
This isn’t one of those shows where a couple of friends ramble on for hours. We spent 2.5 years and thousands of hours of working on this, including 2 trips to Biloela, multiple post-WIP ma-la-tangs, and literal blood (Jay running into a door), sweat, and tears.
We interviewed 40 different experts, as well as Priya and Nades in their first language Tamil in order to bring you these 6 episodes. We hope the Nadesalingams show us what happens when war, politics, profits and humanity collide.
Don’t believe us? Trust the critics – You Have Been Told A Lie won Best News & Current Affairs Podcast at the 2023 Australian Podcast awards.
See what the experts have to say:
“Nobody flees their home lightly, nobody boards a boat, or walks across a desert on a whim. The forces that push people from their homes are powerful, and we need to understand them in order to counter them and to protect the people who are forced to flee.”
— Ben Doherty, Journalist, The Guardian Australia
Jay Ooi
Writer, Producer, Editor
Jay is the Creator and Producer of Shoes Off, a podcast about Asian Australian identity. His work has won him the Gold Award for Smartest Podcast and the Sliver Award for Best Interview at the Australian Podcast Awards 2021 and 2020 respectively. Jay is also the recipient of 2021 Jess Cox Audio Fellowship. Jay also has over 6 years of broadcast television experience, working on studio shows like At The Movies with Margaret and David and The Set, as well as documentaries for National Geographic, Foxtel and Discovery Channel. Jay also has years of freelance video production work, and currently helps tell small business stories in marketing.
Thinesh Thillainadarajah
Creator, Producer
Thinesh is an Eelam Tamil Queer lawyer and creative hailing from Toronto, Canada. In 2019, Thinesh was published in Growing Up Queer in Australia, compiled by Benjamin Law, and was republished in 2021 in Growing Up in Australia amongst other notable writers including Tim Winton, Tara June Winch, and Carly Findlay. Thinesh is the creative producer of Hot Sauce, a roving dance party as well as art oriented gatherings that aim to create an intentional space to celebrate the lives of queer people of colour. Thinesh has also been involved as a Community Engagement Strategist by the Darlinghurst Theatre Company for the Malthouse Theatre Company’s production of Stay Woke, the Belvoir Theatre’s production of The Jungle and the Sea, and recently consulted on the Griffin Theatre Company’s production of Sex Magick.
“This is our story. In our words. With Thinesh and Jay, we have been able to speak frankly about what our life was actually like in Sri Lanka, and what we had to go through to not be sent back.”
— Priya Nadesalingam