Monique Ryan (Kooyong, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in strong opposition to the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025. It is our government's job to ensure national security by controlling who and what enters our country. It must protect our nation, it must enforce our laws and it must manage our borders. But balanced against those demands is the duty of a democratic government to deal fairly and with justice with some of the most consequential decisions that a government can make—decisions regarding detention, deportation and transfer of individuals who lack the power or the platform to defend themselves.

This bill follows the November 2023 High Court ruling on the NZYQ cohort that it was unlawful for the government to indefinitely detain a person if there was 'no real prospect' of them being removed from Australia 'in the reasonably foreseeable future'. In the recent Federal Court decision, it was held that actions in relation to third-country reception arrangements do not require procedural fairness to be afforded. The proposed amendments seek to codify that recent decision by the Federal Court.

This bill is aimed at allowing the government to more quickly deport members of the NZYQ cohort—a group of what we call noncitizens, a somewhat dehumanising term—currently living in the Australian community whose visas were cancelled on character grounds. This cohort previously faced indefinite immigration detention. They cannot be removed to their home countries, because they face persecution or because those countries have refused to accept them. The amendment now before the House explicitly removes procedural fairness in decisions to remove these noncitizens to a third-country reception arrangement and with respect to the sharing of their personal information with those third countries.

The government, in effect, is continuing to double down in pursuing its desire to deport this cohort of individuals by any means possible—by means of legislation which flies in the face of the values and the fundamental tenets of our legal system. Procedural fairness is a foundational principle in Australian administrative law. It ensures that decisions made by public authorities are conducted through fair and unbiased procedures. Procedural fairness is vital to public trust in government decision-making and to upholding the rule of law. One of its two core elements, the right to be heard, is specifically negated by this legislation. Under the proposed changes, procedural fairness will not apply to decisions relating to third-country reception arrangements.

We claim to live in a strong democracy which respects the individual, but this bill denies individuals who are noncitizens of this country what we regard for ourselves as unalienable rights. A human right is universal; it can't be assumed for some and denied for others purely on the basis of their visa status.

The bill is presented as a technical fix relevant to a very small number of individuals, but it could in fact potentially be applied to thousands of people—I'm told potentially as many as 80,000 individuals—who are currently seeking residence in this country. Concerns about the bill are shared by legal experts, by refugee advocates and by community organisations across the country—people who see, every day, the human cost of bureaucratic overreach and who deal with the harm and the hurt that it causes. Just today, the Refugee Council has contacted me to describe this bill as 'unbelievably cruel and extraordinarily costly'. The ASRC has called it 'rushed, reckless and dehumanising'.

Last week, we learnt that the government has quietly, sneakily signed a $408 million deal, plus $70 million annually, with Nauru. The deal will allow the government to send those members of the NZYQ cohort to Nauru, at a cost of $2.4 million per person in the first five years after that transfer. This payment comes on top of a $100 million treaty signed between the two countries last year, and it is separate from the funding that Australia is already giving to Nauru to run its offshore detention regime. That revelation sets a very stark backdrop to today's debate. What we're talking about is vulnerable people, stateless individuals, refugees and survivors of torture and trauma who will, as a result of this bill, be sent offshore with no public explanation, no proper oversight and no legal recourse.

A number of these people previously committed very serious crimes. Some have reoffended. But some have never been convicted of a crime. Some have spent five times as long in immigration detention as they were originally sentenced to serve in prison. Some are frail, some are sick, and some are elderly. They could die in Nauru without proper care. The United Nations Human Rights Committee has previously issued a non-binding order for the federal government to stop one of those deportations on the grounds that the government has legal responsibilities not to deport people to countries where they could face cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, or death. That is exactly what we propose to do with this legislation.

The government claims that its memorandum of understanding with Nauru contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residency of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, and that Australia will provide funding to underpin this arrangement and support Nauru's long-term economic resilience. But the fact is that we know that refugees and people transferred to Nauru have experienced violence in the past. Just this month, the Age carried a report detailing how private security and community safety in Nauru are being overseen by associates of outlaw motorcycle gangs.

Nauru is one of the world's smallest and most economically vulnerable countries. It has a population of fewer than 12,000. It is housed on an area of land which is smaller than the Tullamarine airport. Using a small island nation as a dumping ground for individuals that we don't want here is a disgraceful way to act. It makes Australia a Pacific bullyboy, buying our own piece of mind at the expense of a small and underresourced nation. This amendment risks placing Australia in breach of its binding commitments under international law, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Our credibility abroad and our moral leadership are both diminished when we undermine the very human rights that we advocate for elsewhere.

I particularly want to acknowledge the work of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Grandmothers for Refugees and the many community based organisations and legal advocates across Australia who have brought the gravity of this legislation to public attention and who continue to advocate for those rendered voiceless by systemic neglect and legal exclusion. Their unwavering commitment to justice, to compassion and to accountability strengthens our democracy.

I do not accept that a vision of Australia where the rights of the individual are predicated on where they were born, and where the vulnerable can be denied fair treatment and shuttled across borders in silence is the Australia that we wish to represent, so I urge this parliament to reject this bill and to reaffirm its commitment to the rule of law. If this bill passes, it is a mandate for injustice, paid for with our national reputation and our conscience.

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