Secret transcript: Nauru hopes that deportees it receives in $2.5b deal will go home

3 months ago 18

The Albanese government is arguing it has no responsibility for what happens to people it deports to Nauru, even if they are subject to harm, as it fights in court to uphold the terms of a $2.5 billion deal to deport non-citizens with criminal records to the Pacific island.

Labor’s response to its latest High Court challenge comes as the controversial 30-year Nauru agreement faces mounting scrutiny, following the publication of a hidden transcript revealing Nauruan president David Adeang hopes to send deportees back to their home country.

Nauruan President David Adeang at Parliament House last year.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge and Independent Senator David Pocock read the translated transcript of Adeang’s interview into Hansard on Monday night, thwarting the government’s efforts to keep it secret by refusing the release of its own translation and suppressing the document in court.

According to the transcript of Adeang’s interview with Nauruan media from February this year, he said: “It will not be the first time we have accepted foreigners with backgrounds that are not 100 per cent pristine.”

“In 30 years time, there will have to be meetings between the government of Nauru and the government of Australia and what we’re going to do about these people. I do trust, however, that maybe before then, we will little by little be able to return these people home if they want that.”

The government has been trying to suppress the transcript of Adeang’s interview as it keeps his government onside and avoids human rights criticisms of a deal that allows it to deport hundreds of detainees released into the community after a High Court ruling in 2023.

This ruling, known as the NZYQ case, has been a political headache for the Albanese government, exposing it to years of attack over its handling of community safety. The Nauru fix involves Australia paying the Pacific nation $70 million each year for three decades, on top of a $400 million upfront payment, in exchange for it granting 30-year visas to former detainees.

Burke last week said he would not release any more details of the deal, including the memorandum of understanding, even as a joint investigation by this masthead and 60 Minutes revealed members of the Finks bikie gang had won a taxpayer-funded contract to provide security on Nauru to the deported cohort.

Ogy Simic, head of advocacy at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, which procured the transcript, said: “This secrecy is exactly what Labor criticised the Coalition about when they were in opposition: dodgy contracts, secrecy, and cover-ups that erode public trust.”

In the interview he gave earlier this year, Adeang claimed the people due to be deported had been living comfortably in the Australian community and were expected to do the same in Nauru. He also insisted none of the deportees were refugees, despite contrary claims by non-government organisations working with the cohort who say many of them are refugees or stateless.

“The transcript reveals two different stories are being told,” Shoebridge said.

Adeang’s remarks also prompted the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Shoebridge and Pocock to claim Nauru could send refugees back to countries where they could be harmed – a breach of non-refoulement obligations, which prohibit states from forcing people to return to a country where they risk persecution.

The Albanese government has so far deported at least three people to Nauru and re-detained about 20 from the cohort, but is still facing High Court challenges about the arrangement.

In its response to one of the latest challenges that was published this week, the Commonwealth argues that Australian laws do not require the government to ask whether a country is a “prudent… place to send them” or consider whether the people will be harmed after being deported.

It says the interim agreement with Nauru made it clear that the Pacific island nation has accepted “responsibility to provide support to settled persons to achieve minimum outcomes in line with Nauruan standards of living”.

“Resettled persons are entitled to ‘remain in the Republic for a minimum period of 30 years’ while being ‘permitted to depart and re-enter the Republic’,” the response says.

“A person who can live in Nauru in those circumstances has plainly been ‘removed’ from Australia. There is no factual foundation for any suggestion that Australia exercises ongoing control over persons who have resettled in Nauru (and the existence of any such control is denied).”

Pocock called for the government to be more transparent. “It shouldn’t take senators reading a transcript into Hansard to actually provide the public with some transparency about what’s what’s happening,” he said.