<
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/30/australia-signs-400m-deal-to-deport-foreign-born-former-detainees-to-nauru>
"Human rights lawyers, refugee advocates and the Greens have accused the
Albanese government of striking a “discriminatory, disgraceful and dangerous”
deal to deport hundreds of foreign-born former detainees at a cost of almost
half a billion dollars.
On Friday Australia and Nauru signed a memorandum of understanding allowing the
government to deport about 280 members of the NZYQ cohort, a group of
noncitizens living in the Australian community whose visas were cancelled on
character grounds.
This cohort previously faced indefinite immigration detention and cannot be
deported to their home countries because they face persecution, or because
those countries have refused to accept them.
A deal struck by the home affairs minister, Tony Burke, and Nauru’s president,
David Adeang, will allow these people to be deported in return for an upfront
payment of about $400m to Nauru, followed by annual payments of $70m a year for
related costs.
The deal follows a November 2023 high court ruling, which found it was unlawful
for the government to indefinitely detain a person if there was “no real
prospect” of them being removed from the country “in the reasonably foreseeable
future”. The ruling saw a cohort of individuals released from immigration
detention into the community.
In a statement, Burke said “anyone who doesn’t have a valid visa should leave
the country” and that “this is a fundamental element of a functioning visa
system.”
But the deal has been condemned by the Human Rights Law Centre’s legal
director, Sanmati Verma, who said some of the NZYQ cohort had “never been
convicted of an offence”.
“Others spent five times as long locked up in indefinite detention as they were
sentenced to serve in prison,” Verma said. “Others are elderly and sick, and
might die on Nauru without proper care.”
The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre’s deputy chief executive, Jana Favero, said
the deal was “discriminatory, disgraceful and dangerous” and showed that in
Australia, “some people will be punished simply because of where they were
born”."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
