Australia’s risk just exploded on shonky Nauru Deal. How bad can it get?
They attempted to cover up AUSTRAC’s “suspicious transactions”. Now Senators Shoebridge and Pocock have put the Government in the crosshairs for its complicity in the Nauru scam. Janet Pelly reports.
One of the biggest foreign affairs stories of the year has vanished almost by design.
On Monday night, Senators David Pocock and David Shoebridge read a statement to the Senate. translated interview With Nauru’s President David Adeang. Claims on the subject $2.5 billion NZYQ resettlement deal It was so sensitive that the Australian government decided not to publish it for 10 years.
The next night Senator Shoebridge was up again, reading a book out loud. another bomb.
This time, it was a previously unreleased 2022 report from Australia’s financial intelligence agency, AUSTRAC, detailing “a series of suspicious transactions” by Nauru’s current and past presidents spanning January to September 2020.
they knew
Despite this, the controversial agreement was signed in February 2025. Nauru was the only country willing to accept the NZYQ cohort and the federal election was fast approaching.
The 358 men who were at risk of deportation on Nauru were first released after the Australian High Court ruled in November 2023 that indefinite detention was unlawful.
More than 300 of them are refugees, while others are stateless or cannot return to their countries of origin for other reasons. Therefore, they were detained indefinitely.
The irony of fraud
Although there are some reasons for visa cancellations Australia’s character test – was undeniably serious; It is downright dystopian to think that a fraudulent refugee could be sent to Nauru (after prison and years of detention) for 30 years while the country’s President is accused of siphoning off millions of dollars of Australian taxpayers’ money.
However, the allegations that the Australian government is trying to suppress are more serious.
in conversation President Adeang, with his own Government Information Office, has repeatedly denied that the men were refugees and stated that they had visas.For 30 years – unless… we can find a way to get them to move, for example; “They can go home.”
Who is lying?
Either the Australian government is lying to President Adeang or he is lying to the Nauruans. The truth is that any attempt to bring the men back chain return,
illegal under international law.
It is worth noting that Australia and Nauru are parties to the agreement. 1951 Refugee ConventionIt includes provisions regarding:
Ban on repatriation (Article 33(1)).
A State may never expel or return (‘refouler’) a refugee to a place where he or she will be persecuted in any way.
UNHCR clearly states the following on this issue:
Non-refoulement prohibits “indirect” return, including that the intermediary State may then send the person to a place where he or she faces persecution.”
Canberra exposed
In other words:
If Case A (Australia) sends a person to: Case B (Nauru), knowing that State B could send them back Case C (country of origin) Australia remains responsible.
Both countries became members of the UN Convention Against Torture under (CAT) Article 3 strictly forbids sending a person — directly or indirectly – to any state where they face a real risk of torture.
This includes onward removal through a third country such as Nauru.
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Send back under another name
Five men have already been sent to Nauru and despite President Adeang’s insistence assurances They remain in custody, saying, “They will live among us like normal free people.”
At least ten more people are being held in closed detention in Australia, despite having received visas for Nauru.
Why weren’t they transferred?
My guess is that the Australian government hopes they will choose to return to the countries they fled rather than spend any more time in Australia “mental illness factories or 30 years in exile on Nauru.
This is known as: constructive postback; that is, when a State’s policies and practices make life so unbearable that the person would voluntarily choose to return.
engineered misery
UN Special Rapporteurs and UNHCR have repeatedly stated that such “voluntary returns” are incompatible with the Refugee Convention when the alternative is deliberate misery.
Another explanation is political choreography: It takes flexibility to store people away until the next “crime panic” or feedback loop.
In both cases the result is the same.
Senators Pocock and Shoebridge had to force the truth into the public record, something that has been tried and failed repeatedly since the Pacific Solution began in 2001.
Tony Burke and the old ‘Operational Reasons’ shield
Tony Burke appears to be the latest Home Secretary to use the “operational reasons” shield by refusing to comment on issues raised.
Calls to cancel the controversial agreement are growing. But most urgently we need assurances from the Australian and Nauruan governments that they will respect the laws they have signed.
Bicycle gangs on Nauru. The hypocrisy of Australian visa character tests
Janet Pelly is a Melbourne-based refugee and detention rights advocate. He has been working at Human Rights 4 All since 2019.
