Davy Nguyen knows what it's like to be adrift and vulnerable in a leaky boat.
His father put him on an asylum seeker boat when he was just eight - fleeing persecution in Communist Vietnam.
He has only three photographs of himself as a young boy before coming to Australia, showing him during his time in detention camps in Indonesia and Singapore.
It was a traumatic time for Mr Nguyen, and his memories were stoked when he saw images of the suspected asylum seeker boat off Dampier earlier this month.
"When I saw the visual on TV, it really hit home," he says. "A lot of people haven't really experienced what it's like to be in a dire straight situation where every single minute you live in fear, every minute you feel that you're dying."
It's believed Australian authorities flew the passengers of the rickety boat off WA back to Vietnam on Sunday.
Melbourne-based Vietnamese advocacy group VOICE says 43 of the asylum seekers have been returned to their homes in Binh Thuan province after interrogation.
It says three have been returned to police detention and their fates are currently unknown.
As a refugee himself, Mr Nguyen supports anyone's right to seek asylum, but he's staunchly against those seeking to reach Australia by boat.
"If you have the money, you pay these people smugglers to come to Australia. What about the people who don't have the money who are in these refugee camp sites and waiting to be processed the right way to come to Australia?" he asks.
Mr Nguyen is now the president of the Liberal Party branch in the Sydney suburb of Cabramatta. He's also a cast member in Series 3 of SBS program Go Back to Where You Came From, where he argues boat turnbacks are a necessary evil.
"I have no problem with refugees or asylum seekers but I do think we need to focus on taking the equation out of these people smugglers who are making a business for themselves and exploiting these asylum seekers."
He denies his stance is unfair, given his own history as an asylum seeker.
"Because I didn't pay people smugglers, I didn't use that channel to come to Australia. We just jumped on any bloody boat, got out there and just tried to flee Vietnam all together," he says.
With fresh bipartisan support for boats turnbacks, as well as offshore processing, Mr Nguyen's will likely be the only path to Australia for asylum seekers for some time.
Share
