Is there fresh hope for refugees as the Murugappan family returns home to Biloela?

That was the Queensland town where a family of four was dragged away, straight to detention: Priya, Nades, and their Australian-born daughters Kopika and Tharnicaa. Those kids have barely known freedom but today they are free and on their way back home to Bilo. Happy to see this government grew a heart where the last one couldn't.

At dawn on March 5, 2018, they were forcibly removed from their home of three years, just one day after their visa expired. They were given 10 minutes to pack and then taken 1500km to an immigration detention centre where they were told they would be deported. They were forced to sign documents which said they were being removed voluntarily.

Was this to be the beginning of a blitz?

All this happened under the eye of that kind and compassionate Peter Dutton, he who suffered quite the swing against him at his most recent election.

Scott Ludlam's excoriating description of what happened that night could not have been more accurate, as Dutton wielded his hideous super ministry designed to keep brown people out, to punish refugees. Ludlam wrote: "Ground zero for the accretion of unaccountable power lies behind the event-horizon of whatever the hell we're supposed to call Peter Dutton's super ministry these days.

"Agencies merging behind the scenes like blobs of mercury; the trusty old customs service mutating into Border Force, complete with stormtrooper uniforms and new powers to pound on your door at 5am if you're the wrong shade of illegal."

But the super ministry and its compassionate leader could not have reckoned with bush kindness, which has beneath it steel and a sense of fair play.

Within a few days of the kidnapping of the Nadesalingam family, Angela Fredericks, a Biloela social worker, started a petition. Ten days after the abduction, 60,000 people had signed up, demanding the family's return to the Queensland country town. "They have lived here for over three years and are a caring, hardworking family," petition creator Fredericks wrote.

Thank god for activists. Fredericks, Saivashini Jayakumar, Melbourne immigration lawyer Carina Ford, Simone Cameron in Brisbane, the blessed Bronwyn Dendale who raised the alarm on the day it happened (and others) got stuck in. In all that time, they never lost focus. And now that focus has paid off. The family will return to Bilo on Friday, straight to a home the town has organised. The next day the town will celebrate Flourish, a multicultural festival which is now functioning as a homecoming for the family.

University of Sydney's Professor of Public Law and co-director of the Sydney Centre for International Law Mary Crock is pleased for the family. This particular family. But she says that the way we treat refugees in this country is utterly inconsistent. Fine by plane. Ridiculously harsh behaviour if they come by boat. As she puts it, Sri Lanka has been utterly riven by a civil war yet we still don't accept those escaping from the aftermath.

Government after government has done deals with our nearest neighbours to keep refugees away from our shores, she says; and she sees no prospects for change.

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So why did this particular campaign work, I ask Crock.

"As soon as someone moves in next door and they become real people and they stop being the feared 'other', they become your workmate and your friends," she says.

"In Australia, the situation is hugely political and ugly. We Australians don't like boat people. We are very easily scared. The former government has played with everybody's emotions and controlled the story."

And fixing this was low-hanging fruit for the new government. Labor has not covered itself in glory when it comes to the treatment of refugees but the swift action on the Biloela family comforts some. And perhaps it's a new beginning.

When I last spoke to Fredericks she confessed there was a rump of redneckism in Bilo, folks who weren't too keen on the campaign. That's pretty much gone now. When news broke that the family would be going back to Bilo, locals stopped her everywhere. She'd be waiting to pay in the queue at Drake's and people would congratulate her and say how happy they were. Same when she was waiting at Rise, the bakery cafe. Just glorious genuine happiness.

"People I have never even spoken to come up to me," she says.

The bridging visa is good news but permanent residency will be better news and Australian citizenship will be bloody fantastic. Apparently, Fredericks tells me, the family has to have two years on PR before they can apply for the full shebang. But they've been here for years, I say.

Nah, doesn't count.

"Still we have a government that wants to talk to us and work with us." For that she is grateful.

And the Biloela community has already set up the little home for the new Australians (or soon to be).

What's happened to Fredericks's career as a social worker?

She says it is one of the best things about being in private practice, being able to work while being active to protect the Nadesallingam family.

Now she wants to work to protect other Tamil families in Australia: "They deserve our protection."

Hurray for the activists. And let's hope we have a government who is on board with protecting refugees instead of throwing their hopes and dreams overboard, real understanding instead of phony compassion.