Angus Taylor's comments remind refugees like me that our belonging is conditional
By Thouraya Lahmadi
As someone who has lived the reality of seeking asylum, the Coalition leader’s discriminatory language is not distant or abstract. It lands personally, writes Thouraya Lahmadi.
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I know Australia at its best.
It’s the country where a neighbour checks in on you when you’re sick, where strangers help you find your way when you’re lost, where people believe - deep down - in fairness and giving others a second chance. It’s the country I chose to become a citizen of after coming here seeking safety.
But I’ve been thinking a lot about the language being used in our national conversation about people seeking asylum and refugees, particularly in recent comments from opposition leader Angus Taylor. Announcing the Coalition’s immigration policy last week, he described people from Gaza as “high risk”; called for governments to “discriminate” based on values; and suggested political control over who receives protection, all despite Australia’s obligations under the Refugee Convention.
As someone who has lived the reality of seeking asylum, this kind of language doesn’t feel distant or abstract. It lands personally.
When I first arrived in Australia with my family, I didn’t know what my future would look like. I remember the uncertainty most clearly - the waiting, the not knowing, the constant feeling that your life is on hold while decisions are made about you in rooms you will never enter. You are grateful to be safe, but also exhausted by having so little control over your own life.
What carried me through that time was not policy or politics, but people. Volunteers who treated me with dignity. Community members who bought us what we needed to celebrate Eid al-Adha and stay connected to our culture in a new place. Neighbours who saw me as a person first, not a label or a case number. That experience is why this rhetoric worries me.
When people seeking asylum are described in terms like “risk,” it flattens our lives into something suspicious or dangerous. It makes it easier to forget that behind every application is a human being who has already survived something most people cannot imagine and is simply trying to be safe.
People seeking asylum are not a threat. They are people trying to rebuild their lives, contribute to their communities, and live without fear.
I am one of those people. I am now an Australian citizen, and I am proud of that. But becoming a citizen does not erase the experience of having once been in that position - of being judged, assessed, and spoken about as if your future here is conditional on how well you fit a political narrative.
And that is what concerns me most: the idea that belonging can become conditional again, even after you have done everything asked of you. That it can be debated, tightened, or withdrawn depending on the language of the day.
There is also something broader happening when this kind of language becomes normal in public debate. It does not stay contained within policy discussions. It shapes how people see each other in everyday life.
If leaders suggest that some groups are “high risk,” it can filter into how neighbours are treated, how people with accents are perceived, how migrants are looked at in workplaces or on the street. It quietly shifts suspicion into normality.
I have felt this before. I’ve been in situations where I could sense I was being assessed before I had even spoken. Where my accent, hijab, or background seemed to speak louder than anything I was actually saying. It’s a small thing in isolation, but over time it adds up. It makes you aware that acceptance can feel fragile.
That is why words matter so much.
Australia is at its best when it holds firm to compassion and fairness, even - and especially - in political debate. It is at its best when it remembers that protection is not something we selectively extend depending on where someone is from or how they are framed.
We have obligations under international law, but more importantly, we have a choice about who we want to be as a society.
For me, that choice is clear. I want to live in a country where people seeking safety are not treated as risks to be managed, but as people to be protected.
Because safety should not come with conditions. And belonging should not depend on how we are described.
About the author
Thouraya Lahmadi
Thouraya Lahmadi is a writer, former teacher, and refugee whose work explores identity and belonging. Having sought asylum in Australia and as a member of the Asylum Seekers Centre community, she draws on her lived experience to advocate on the realities of displacement and the importance of building diverse and resilient communities.
What Angus Taylor said simultaneously enraged and saddened me! Western democracies have done more damage to the inhabitants of this planet than any other countries and he is claiming we have moral authority! No just no!
Well said. I support you.
Jenny
Mildura