Anthony Albanese has insisted there’s “nothing secret” about a $400m deal with Nauru to offload hundreds of non-citizens to the tiny Pacific island as questions mount over the agreement’s fine print.
The Albanese government quietly announced the news on Friday evening without attaching a dollar figure to the deal, nor providing details of the agreement between the nations.
The prime minister said the arrangements to deport about 280 members of the NZYQ cohort, a group of non-citizens living in the Australian community whose visas were cancelled on character grounds, were “hardly secret” on Monday.
However, Albanese refused to answer how and when the payments would be made to Nauru, and how long the agreement would last.
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“The arrangements we have put out, we’ll continue to engage, we want to deal with the NZYQ issue,” he told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.
“These are people who do not have a legitimate reason to stay in Australia.”
Human rights lawyers, refugee advocates and the Greens have all condemned the government’s “discriminatory, disgraceful and dangerous” deal while raising concerns about whether the deal contained assurances about the safety of the cohort.
One federal Labor MP told Guardian Australia
: “I feel a little uncomfortable with it, but I guess the government is really trying to take the politics away and get rid of a problem that’s been there for a long time,” they said on the condition of anonymity.
The assistant immigration minister, Matt Thistlethwaite, told Sky News it was up to the Nauruan government whether the cohort could live freely or with restrictions.
“I understand that possibly they can live in the community over there. It’ll be a matter for the Nauruan government,” he said.
“But the funding that we’re providing is to help them settle people over there.”
On Sunday, the Nauru government said the money would be placed in the nation’s sovereign wealth fund, the Nauru Intergenerational Trust Fund. The government announced the fund, established in 2015 by the now president, David Adeang, surpassed $420m in August prior to the deal’s announcement.
“The capital fund will be distributed to the Nauru Trust Fund, to support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience and the operationalisation of the agreement contingent to the cohort size received,” Adeang said in a budget speech on Friday.
The environment minister, Murray Watt, said on Sunday Nauru had agreed to a “substantial number of the cohort” that would be sent over gradually rather than in “one hit”.
“The plan is to scale the number up and allow Nauru to put in place the systems that allow for the number to increase over time,” he said.
The latest deal with Nauru followed an announcement by home affairs minister, Tony Burke, in February to take three members of the NZYQ cohort, including a convicted murderer.
The three men have since lodged a series of appeals against their deportation, after they were found not to be refugees and not owed protection. They remain in Australia.
In a February Senate estimates hearing, home affairs department officials said Nauru had discretion on where the men could live, and had indicated the site of former regional processing centres could be used.
The officials said Australia’s “non-negotiables” in the original deal with Nauru related to the men’s freedom of movement and non-refoulement – where a person cannot be returned to a country where they face the threat of serious harm.
The NZYQ cohort includes non-citizens released into the community in Australia as a result of a landmark 2023 high court decision. The court ruled in favour of “NZYQ”, a stateless Rohingya man, who faced the prospect of detention for life because no country had agreed to resettle him, due to a criminal conviction for raping a 10-year-old in Australia.
