A few years ago, during the turmoil in Afghanistan, a friend of mine and his family were offered a humanitarian pathway to Australia by the Coalition government. They arrived carrying trauma, uncertainty, and a fragile hope that safety might eventually become stability. Today, they are still building that stability – appointment by appointment, physio session by physio session – while relying on the national disability insurance scheme (NDIS) to support their son’s rehabilitation, who was left paralysed after illness.

Like many humanitarian migrants, my friend is not distant from policy debates – he is simply too busy surviving them to follow them closely. He has not yet heard that the Coalition, which once supported humanitarian resettlement, is now proposing a significant tightening of welfare eligibility: restricting access to a range of supports, including the NDIS, to citizens only.

On one level, the argument is familiar. Public systems are under pressure. The NDIS now costs tens of billions of dollars a year, and both major parties have been seeking ways to control growth and ensure long-term sustainability. In that context, it is politically straightforward to argue that citizenship should define access to publicly funded support.

The years before citizenship are not marginal – they........

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