Australian government criticised over ‘disgraceful’ $400m deal to deport foreign-born former detainees to Nauru
An agreement relating to the NZYQ cohort, who previously faced indefinite immigration detention, was signed by home affairs minister Tony Burke on Friday
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”.
Similar statements have been issued by the Refugee Advice and Casework Service and by Greens senator David Shoebridge, who has accused the government of “forcing our smaller neighbours to become 21st century prison colonies”.
In a statement uploaded to the home affairs department website on Friday afternoon, Burke said 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”.
The statement said Australia’s funding would “underpin this arrangement and support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience”.
Australia and Nauru struck a financial deal to resettle three members of the NZYQ cohort in February, who were described by the federal government as violent offenders.
At the time, Adeang said the three men had “served their time” in Australian prisons and were no longer subject to any punishment. They were granted 30-year visas and the right to settle and work in Nauru.
“Australia is trying to send them back to their country but they are not wanted back home,” Adeang said in February. “So we accepted them from Australia. They are not Australian and Australia doesn’t want them.”
But the three men have lodged a series of appeals against their deportation, after they were found not to be refugees and not owed protection.
This new memorandum of understanding provides the basis for more members of the NZYQ cohort to be deported to Nauru. It is not known whether future deportations will be subject to legal challenge.
Earlier this week, the federal government introduced an amendment that would explicitly remove procedural fairness in deportation decisions for foreign-born criminals, including those in the NZYQ cohort.
On Thursday, Burke said the legislation would “expressly exclude procedural fairness from applying” when the government sought to deport noncitizens who have lost their visa.
Speaking to parliament, Burke said principles of “procedural fairness” needed to be suspended in some cases because those provisions “are being used by noncitizens to delay and frustrate their removal, at cost to the commonwealth in circumstances where it is neither necessary nor appropriate for it to continue to apply”.
Burke said the bill would mean that actions taken by government in order to resettle someone in a third country “are not conditioned on an obligation to afford procedural fairness”.
The Senate on Thursday rejected a Greens push for an inquiry into the legislation, which Shoebridge slammed as “one of the nastiest, meanest attacks” on multicultural Australia.
Shoebridge also accused the government of trying to “sneak through” the legislation, which was introduced just an hour before the government announced Asio’s assessment that Iran had directed antisemitic attacks in Australia.
▻https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/30/australia-signs-400m-deal-to-deport-foreign-born-former-detainees-to-na
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