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, AUD 400 million ($262 million) to establish the deal, then AUD 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 that 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 receives the first “transferees,” who will be given long-term visas, the president said.
Australia’s Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, an advocacy group, reported that Nauru planned to issue 280 visas to non-citizens that Australia wanted to deport. The centre said legislation to be introduced to Parliament on would strip the right of fairness from deportation decisions under the new Nauru deal. Cancelled visas that are under appeal in court would be cancelled by the new law. he 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 to 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.