The first amongst the 12,000 Syrian and Iraqi refugees to be resettled in Australia under the federal government’s plan announced during the tenure of Tony Abbott is due to arrive in Perth on Tuesday. The family of five has been selected after a rigorous process of security screening, according to Social Services Minister Christian Porter.

“But we’re talking, of course, about people here, and in the case of this family, understand who have been in refugee camps for very long periods of time,” Porter told reporters in Perth on Monday. “So there is a very high level of ability of the Australian government to assess them in a very rigorous way.”

The family that consists of a couple and their three children are arriving earlier than they were previously expected because of some medical reasons, Porter says. However, he refused to divulge any further information about the family. The family will be received by government officials who will help them settle down in Perth. The process of awarding the family with the status of refuge has been slow but very thorough, according to the minister.

A Metropolitan Migrant Resource Centre caseworker has been assigned to help the family register themselves with the government, language services and school.

More asylum seekers are expected to arrive in December. According to the social service minister, the program is going to pick momentum from January onwards.

He also said that there can be delays to the program as the government would not rush with resettling the refugees. This is because a Syrian passport was discovered beside one of the suicide bombers in Paris, which suggested that the attackers could have entered through Greece as refugees.

"If the program time is blown out, it's blown out because we want to make sure we can be assured as to who is coming to our country and the government is not going to step back from that position," he told Fairfax Radio.

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