On September 21 2025 Rathy Barthlote delivered the Spring Equinox Talk at the Centre for a Compassionate Society, in conversation with Petrina Barson on the theme of Compassion and the Asylum Seeker experience.

Listen to the talk here

Rathy Barthlote travelled thousands of miles when she fled Sri Lanka with her husband and daughter to come to Australia by boat in 2013 hoping to find a safe and permanent home. Instead she was denied refugee status by the former government’s unfair ‘Fast Track’ process and has lived with the threat of deportation, and separation from her Australian born second daughter, since then.

In 2023, with 21 other women, Rathy walked 640km from Melbourne to Canberra to draw attention to their plight. In 2024 she went to the footpath outside the Department of Home Affairs office in Melbourne, and participated in the months long encampment there. Whereas the Biloela family were granted permanency after a high profile campaign by their local community, Rathy – with thousands of others – still waits. She is a courageous, deeply compassionate woman who describes herself in the context of a broader struggle: