“He agrees with me it’s gone on far too long,” Mr O’Dowd said.
“It’s no good for the family,it’s no good for the Australian taxpayer,it’s not good for anyone and it’s got to be resolved.”
Mr O’Dowd,who is based in Gladstone and has held the electorate of Flynn since 2010,said the case had become a “lawyer’s picnic” and could be ended with a government decision to give the family permanent residency.
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“It’s now in[Mr Hawke’s] lap,so to speak,and he says he’s got about 2000 pages of documentation to go through. But hopefully he’ll have a resolution in two weeks’ time,” Mr O’Dowd said.
“He said ‘give me two weeks’,you can quote me on that,that’s what he told me at 9am this morning and hopefully we can have a happy ending to a very sad situation.”
Other government MPs have made personal calls to Mr Hawke to use his discretion to release the family from detention in order to ensure the welfare of the children,but few Liberals and Nationals have gone public with their concerns.