Human rights lawyers, refugee advocates and the Greens have condemned a new agreement between Australia and Nauru that will see hundreds of former immigration detainees deported at a cost of almost half a billion dollars.
The memorandum of understanding, signed on Friday by the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, and Nauru’s president, David Adeang, will allow about 280 non-citizens from the NZYQ cohort to be sent to Nauru. The group are individuals who previously had their visas cancelled on character grounds, but who could not be deported to their countries of origin due to fears of persecution or refusals by those governments to accept them.
Under the deal, Canberra will provide an upfront payment of around $400m, followed by $70m annually to cover associated costs.
The agreement comes after a landmark High Court ruling in November 2023 found it unlawful to hold people in indefinite immigration detention where there was “no real prospect” of removal within the foreseeable future. That judgment led to the release of the NZYQ cohort into the community.
Burke defended the arrangement, stating: “Anyone who doesn’t have a valid visa should leave the country. This is a fundamental element of a functioning visa system.”
The agreement has, however, drawn sharp criticism. Sanmati Verma, legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, noted that some of those affected had “never been convicted of an offence”, while others had served prison terms far shorter than the time they spent in detention. “Others are elderly and sick, and might die on Nauru without proper care,” she said.
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s deputy chief executive, Jana Favero, called the deal “discriminatory, disgraceful and dangerous”, warning that it punished people “simply because of where they were born”. The Refugee Advice and Casework Service issued a similar statement, while Greens senator David Shoebridge accused the government of turning Nauru into a “21st-century prison colony”.
In its statement, the Department of Home Affairs said the agreement contained undertakings to ensure the “proper treatment and long-term residence” of those transferred, and that Australia’s funding would “support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience”.
The deal builds on a precedent set earlier this year, when three members of the NZYQ cohort were resettled in Nauru under a separate financial arrangement. At the time, Adeang said the men, described by Australia as violent offenders, had “served their time” and would be allowed to live and work on 30-year visas.
Legal challenges are still before the courts in relation to those earlier deportations, and it remains unclear whether the new transfers will face similar proceedings.
The government has also introduced legislation that would strip non-citizens of the right to procedural fairness in deportation cases, including members of the NZYQ cohort. Speaking in parliament on Thursday, Burke argued that the principle was being exploited to “delay and frustrate” removals, at cost to the Commonwealth.
“The bill will ensure that government action to resettle someone in a third country is not conditioned on an obligation to afford procedural fairness,” he said.
The Senate rejected a Greens proposal for an inquiry into the legislation. Shoebridge described the measures as “one of the nastiest, meanest attacks” on multicultural Australia, and accused the government of attempting to “sneak through” the bill shortly before the announcement of intelligence findings that Iran had directed antisemitic attacks in Australia.
