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MELBOURNE: Australia will pay the small Pacific island of Nauru to resettle foreign-born criminals who the courts have ruled cannot be imprisoned indefinitely, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday.
Nauru has become a political solution for the government after Australia’s High Court ruled in 2023 that non-citizens with no prospects of being resettled outside Australia could no longer be held indefinitely in immigration detention.
Albanese did not confirm media reports that Australia would pay the tiny Pacific Island nation, population 13,000, 400 million Australian dollars ($262 million) to establish the deal then AU$70 million ($46 million) annually to maintain it.
“People who have no right to be here need to be found somewhere to go, if they can’t go home,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“If they can’t be sent back to their country-of-origin because of refoulement provisions and obligations that we have, then we need to find another country for them to go to,” Albanese added.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke surprised Australian media on Friday by visiting Nauru, where he signed a memorandum of understanding with Nauruan President David Adeang.
Adeang said in a statement on Sunday the agreement “contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received by Nauru.”
“Australia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience,” Adeang said.
The agreement will be activated when Nauru received the first “transferees,” who will be given long-term visas, the president said.
Australia’s Asylum Seeker Resource Center, an advocacy group, reported Nauru planned to issue 280 visas to non-citizens that Australia wanted to deport.
The center said legislation to be introduced to Australia’s Parliament on Tuesday would strip the right of fairness from deportation decisions under the new Nauru deal. Canceled visas that are under appeal in court would be canceled by the new law.
The center’s deputy chief executive Jana Favero said the legislation could enable 80,000 people to be deported.
“That’s tens of thousands of lives at risk — not the tiny number the government would have Australians believe,” Favero said in a statement.
Albanese said the full details of the agreement would be made public simultaneously by both governments.
“There’re complexities and detail here, including the number of people who go,” Albanese said.
An Australian High Court decision in 2023 overturned the government’s policy of leaving in detention immigrants who failed Australia’s character test, usually because of criminal conduct. The government said they could not be deported.
Countries including Afghanistan are considered unsafe for their nationals to be repatriated. Iran refuses to accept Iranians who are not returning voluntarily.
The test case was brought by a member of Myanmar’s persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority identified in court as NZYQ. He was brought to Australia in a smuggler’s boat in 2012, and raped a child soon after being released into the Australian community. He served a prison sentence and was then transferred into indefinite immigration detention until he won his court case.
More than 200 immigrants who cannot be deported have been released from detention as a result of the NZYQ case. Some have committed more crimes and have returned to prison.
Burke announced in February that three violent criminals, including a convicted murderer, had been issued with 30-year visas to live in Nauru. But their deportations have been challenged in Australian courts.