Hundreds of former immigration detainees, including convicted criminals, could live in Nauru freely under a $408 million deal to deport them to the Pacific nation.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced the federal government had quietly signed a deal with Nauru President David Adeang last Friday, to deport around 280 members of the NZYQ cohort to Nauru.
Australia will pay the Pacific nation $408 million upfront, followed by $70 million per year to underpin the arrangement.
Burke said on Friday the deal "contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru".
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the deal wasn't "secret", but refused to disclose how long the deal will last.
"There are complexities and detail here, including the number of people who go, there's a range of provisions as part of it," he told the ABC.
He said there was an agreement between the Australian and Nauruan governments, with arrangements that would be "released appropriately at the same time together".
A government source has told SBS News that around 280 members of the NZYQ cohort are to be granted visas in Nauru and will live among the local population of around 12,000 people and would not be going into detention.
The NZYQ cohort refers to a group of detainees who were released into the Australian community after the High Court ruled indefinite immigration detention was unlawful in 2023.
That decision led to the immediate release of around 150 immigration detainees, with an additional 130 released since then.
Some of the group of non-citizens had serious criminal convictions, while others were in immigration detention for visa issues.
"Anyone who doesn't have a valid visa should leave the country," Burke said as he announced the decision.
"This is a fundamental element of a functioning visa system."
Last year, the government passed a suite of laws that included granting the government additional powers for deportation.
Deal 'dehumanising' for asylum seekers
Now, the government has introduced another tranche of legislation, which rights groups say will strip people of their right to procedural fairness and natural justice.
Sanmati Verma, a legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre has criticised it, saying the government was handing itself "extraordinary new powers" to deport the 280 detainees if the bill is passed.
"There is currently, unless they've got some other process pending, no barrier to those people being either re detained or sent back to Nauru," she told SBS News.
Verma said the NZYQ cohort has already served their sentences for past criminal offences, if they have committed any - and punishing them further is unjust.
"It raises questions about the procedural rights that our government thinks that migrants and refugees should be entitled to, as opposed to the rest of the population.
Greens senator David Shoebridge said the Nauru deportation deal is "dehumanising". Source: AAP / Mick Tsikas
Other lawyers have also expressed alarm at the deportation deal, which they say has the risk of being applied more broadly.
Alison Battisson, the director principal and founder of Human Rights for All, said it should be a "red flag" for Australians concerned about the separation of powers and about the "overstep" of the executive into the judiciary.
While discussion of the group has often focused on criminal findings against some of the non-citizens, Battisson said this is a disingenuous misrepresentation.
"They do have visas to be in Australia and the vast majority are on bridging visa Rs, which are given to people who might have character concerns but not necessarily criminal records," she said.
"Certainly there is a large number of people within that cohort who have very minor criminal records, including as children, and who have been in the community and not offended for a decade or more," she said.
Australia has committed an upfront payment of $408 million as part of a deal to send non-citizens formerly in immigration detention to Nauru, with an additional $70 million each year to cover ongoing costs. Source: AAP / Ben McKay
"On the same week that we are seeing far-right rallies attacking multiculturalism on the streets, we have the Labor Party introducing laws in parliament to strip away the rights of natural justice and entering into yet another dehumanising deal with Nauru, playing into that same rhetoric of dehumanising people seeking asylum and attacking multiculturalism," he said.
Albanese defended the deal, saying his government makes "no apologies" over finding a way to handle the decision of the High Court.
"These are people who do not have a legitimate reason to stay in Australia. People who have no right to be here need to be found somewhere to go."
