What is Tharnicaa Murugappan suffering from?
Should Home Affairs apologise to the Media about Tharnicaa Murugappan?
Home Affairs Minister, Karen Andrews, has claimed that a lot of the reporting about the illness the child is suffering from is inaccurate.
One news report has said: “Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has sensationally claimed a young girl evacuated from Christmas Island to the mainland for medical treatment was not as sick as people believed.”
This might be better worded as “Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has claimed that some media reports, that people are believing, are overstating the medical situation of the young girl evacuated from Christmas Island”.
Tharnicaa Murugappan, the youngest member of the Biloela asylum-seeker family, was taken to Perth Children’s Hospital for treatment.
News reports are saying that the Home Affairs Minister, Karen Andrews, claimed the child’s illness had been overstated.
Her words are quoted as:
“A lot of the reporting about the illness the child is suffering from is inaccurate,”
“I can’t answer anything that would give details of this child’s medical condition other than to say a lot of the reporting has been inaccurate.”
“The illness the child is suffering and is in hospital for has been well and truly treated, in the advice I have been given.”
Labor frontbencher Andrew Giles described the minister’s comments as careless and callous.
Mr Giles said: “Tharnicaa got so sick in detention that she had to be evacuated to a Perth hospital where she remains,”
“The minister should reflect on her comments. And she must apologise.”
The above headline seems at odds with what I read.
More like “Minister questions media reporting of Biloela girl’s sickness.”
But then, I also tend not to believe a lot of what I read in the various media sources anyway.
An old saying.. Don’t let the facts get in the way of a good story.