No docs here, says Home Affairs, of Nauru docs freshly signed

The Department of Home Affairs has refused to produce documents relating to Australia’s asylum agreement with Nauru. MWM‘s FOI request. What is fraud?

The fraud was revealed during a tense meeting in the Senate yesterday, where signed documents were said to have been available days before the FOI rejected them.

Senator David Shoebridge was grilled over the department’s refusal to release the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), or trust deed, which sets out how hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funds will be controlled.

FOI request submitted by MWM He asked for the Memorandum of Understanding and the certificate of trust. Home Affairs responded by saying the foundation was “non-existent” and issued a completely blacked-out Memorandum of Understanding, citing exemptions in national security and international relations.

Shoebridge noted that although the Home Office had signed a trust deed with Nauru eight days earlier, on 21 October, the department refused to publish the trust deed on 29 October on the grounds that “no separate documentation was available”.

Chief Immigration Officer Clare Sharp attempted to make a distinction between a “memorandum of trust” and what she called a “memorandum of trust”.

“Senator, the document signed on October 21 was a memorandum of understanding. It was not a power of attorney… it was a memorandum of understanding for the regulation of the trust,” Sharp said.

Shoebridge pressed the department and asked: “Is the Ministry responding to the MoU by playing semantics to prevent this document from being produced? Eight days ago, you not only refused to produce the document, but also signed a Memorandum of Trust establishing the trust. MWM You rejected the second part of the request because there was no confidential document.

Then Home Office Secretary Stephanie Foster, ie. ‘Winky’ insisted that the statement referred to the date it was taken, not the date of the decision.”

Shoebridge then asked the Ministry: “Will you now present the document you describe as the memorandum of trust to this committee?” Foster said the Department responded as follows:

will consider the question and “check it for sensitivity.”

Wink, wink. Poke, poke. We all know what happens from here…

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