"My father came in 2000, and after 2001 we all know what happened [with the start of offshore processing]. Our lives would have been completely different, we would have been in detention centres. When I think about that, it blows my mind."

On the other side of the country, Hadi, who arrived as an asylum seeker in 2010 and now lives in Perth working as a tiler, has a very different story to tell. He has a wife and three children in Afghanistan whom he has not seen for seven years. His fourth child has died in the period since his departure. He has at least another five years to wait before he can apply to bring them out here – that is, if he is successful in gaining his Safe Haven Enterprise visa, for which he is still waiting.

"It is not easy to tell someone what I am feeling because it is so painful" he says. "My son, if I see him in five years, will be a man – that is if he survives. If I go back the Taliban will kill me, and then my wife and children would surely die after me."

Hadi's plight is common to thousands of asylum seekers around the country, highlighted in a report released this weekend by the Refugee Council of Australia. The council says family reunion has become difficult enough for refugees on permanent visas – with increasingly long waiting times, and in many cases very high fees – but virtually impossible for those on temporary visas as successive governments in Canberra have narrowed the options for family reunion.

The report, based on extensive surveys of asylum seekers by the council's policy officer Sahar Okhovat, warns "the physical security offered by Australia is offset by the ongoing mental anguish of family separation".