Won’t chase ’Twitter public sentiment’ on SL family: Aussie PM

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison is resisting widespread calls to allow a Sri Lankan Tamil family facing deportation to remain in Australia, saying he will not chase ‘Twitter public sentiment,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported on Wednesday.

It said the couple Priya and Nadesalingam are fighting to return to the Central Queensland town of Biloela, near Gladstone, with their Australian-born daughters Kopika (4) and Tharunicaa (2).

The family are being held on Christmas Island, about 2,000 kilometres from Perth, as they await the outcome of a last-ditch legal effort to stay.

A rare alliance of conservative commentators, opposition parties and Coalition backbenchers is urging the Prime Minister to let the family of four stay.

But Mr Morrison has dismissed their pleas as "Twitter public sentiment". "It's about doing the right thing by the national interest. It's not about chasing public sentiment," he said.

"I understand absolutely the motivation and the compassion that Australians have expressed in relation to this case. But I also know from bitter experience that if you make the wrong calls on these issues, then you invite tragedy and you invite chaos."

Mr Morrison is encouraging the family to return to Sri Lanka, and then apply for fresh Australian visas.

The Federal Court in Melbourne on Wednesday extended the latest injunction protecting the family's youngest child Tharunicaa - and by extension her family - from being deported until 4pm on Friday.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese travelled to Biloela to join the family's supporters. The family lived in the Queensland town until they were removed in a pre-dawn raid last year.

Mr Albanese called on the Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to intervene, something he said the minister had done thousands of times before.

"What it is, simply, is what Peter Dutton has done on more than 4,000 occasions as minister, on an average of three times every day he's been a minister - using his ministerial discretion to say that it is in Australia's national interest for this family to be restored into the community that they love and which clearly loves them."

One of the family's supporters, Laraine Webster, said she remained upset by the way they were taken from the town in the early hours one-morning last year.

"It's the way they were taken ... in separate vans," Ms Webster said. "They belong here. The community needs people."

In Melbourne, the Federal Court heard Immigration Minister David Coleman on Tuesday night declined to use his discretionary powers to allow Tharunicaa to apply for a protection visa.

The toddler is considered an unauthorised maritime arrival, despite being born in Australia, because her parents arrived by boat. As such, she is unable to make a visa application from detention. The only way she could do that is for the minister to make an exception in allowing her to apply.

Justice Mordecai Bromberg will hear her case again on Friday morning. He asked for the matter to proceed on Friday "without any further surprises" after the Tuesday night development.

The family's immigration lawyer Carina Ford said they were still "relatively distressed" on Christmas Island.

"We're still in uncertain territory, but I guess the fight is not over yet," she told reporters outside court on Wednesday.

Senior minister Mathias Cormann said the family's pleas for protection had been comprehensively assessed by the government and the courts.

"At every step on the way, those assessments have confirmed they do not qualify to come to Australia as asylum seekers," he told the ABC.

"This is about making sure we don't send a signal to people smugglers who are out there waiting to see a weakening in the resolve of the Australian Government in protecting our borders."