Dumping Desperate Refugees in Foreign Countries Is Back: Interview with Senator David Shoebridge

The Albanese government came to power in 2022 talking big about ending the limbo of tens of thousands of refugees who’d been stuck on temporary protection visas for a decade, however as Labor ended its last full year of its current term, it rolled out three draconian pieces of migration legislation that commentators agreed marked the most severe turn against refugees for decades.

Immigration minister Tony Burke asserted at the time that the swag of laws being enacted via the three bills were a response to two recent High Court decisions, 2023’s NZYQ, which led to 246 indefinite detainees, some of whom had criminal records, being released into the community, as well as 2024’s YBFZ, which resulted in a strict surveillance regime for NZYQ releasees being struck down.

A 16 February 2025 Albanese government announcement that it is to send three NZYQ detainees, who all have criminal histories, including one who has been convicted of murder, to be resettled and to live permanently in Nauru, as our nation has paid the much less affluent country an undisclosed amount to settle the three men.

While our nation wants to resume dumping asylum seekers in third countries, it has agreed to settle them itself under the 1951 Refugee Convention. The international agreement states that nations can’t send refugees who arrive within their borders back to the country from which they fled genuine persecution, which is a principle known as nonrefoulement. 

Yet, there are now 80,000 people living here that could be face deportation under the new law. And there’s now chatter that the Nauruan president might be planning to take the cash and then send these men back to their countries of origin regardless.

Offshore processing back on

So, while the Albanese government came to power seemingly committing to end the long drawn out refugee crisis, which eventually saw Nauru cleared of all offshore detainees in June 2023, which was the first time in over a decade, two years on and there are now over 100 offshore detainees once again dumped on the island nation by our government.

Following the closing of federal parliament last year, as Albanese and his cabinet basked in the glory of having progressed even nastier laws than the Coalition for a change, Australian Greens immigration spokesperson Senator David Shoebridge paid a visit to the 40-odd former Manus Island offshore detainees that our nation has simply stranded in Papua New Guinea for the last half decade.

These men had been surviving on limited funding that our government had been providing to ensure they were housed. Then PM Scott Morrison cut a deal with PNG in late 2021 to provide limited finances for them, but this then ran out in 2023. And the men are now surviving on the inadequate funding that Albanese resumed in mid-2024, due to a PNG threat to send the cohort here.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to Australian Greens Senator David Shoebridge about our nation resuming the dumping of asylum seekers who arrive by boat in other people’s countries, what the Nauruan president has apparently said his plans are for the NZYQ ‘illegal noncitizens’ he’s agreed to take in, and how the nation might be looking at another era of mass offshore immigration detention.

Albanese has just struck a deal with the nation of Nauru, paying it an undisclosed amount to resettle three asylum seekers from the NZYQ cohort, which is a group of over 200 former immigration detention detainees released in November 2023, after the High Court ruled indefinite detention is illegal.

What sort of issues does our government paying to resettle these people in Nauru pose, especially as it appears the government considers them too dangerous to live here?

First, this is an obscene abuse of Australia’s economic power, effectively bribing Nauru to solve a domestic political problem for the Labor government.

But more fundamentally, this is a gross breach by Australia of our international obligations to provide protection to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution in the country from which they fled.

When the legislation that permitted this deal to be struck passed through parliament at the end of last year, pretty much every credible stakeholder said that any arrangement like this would breach Australia’s obligation of nonrefoulement, because it has no protections at all for people who are sent to Nauru, then being sent back to the country from which they fled, even in circumstances when Australian authorities have found they have a well-founded fear of persecution.

In short, it is potentially sending people by one remove to actually be tortured or harmed in countries like Iran, Russia, Iraq and other such regimes.

I understand there is a speech that was given by the Nauruan president about the three asylum seekers to be sent to his country that is casting some doubts on the fate of these men.

Before the ink was even dry on the agreement the Labor government struck with Nauru, the Nauruan president came out and gave a speech in Nauruan, which the initial translations suggest is directly contrary to the Australian statement about protections against nonrefoulement.

The president concluded his speech by saying the expectations of the Nauruan government is that anybody who is sent there from Australia, will eventually be returned to the country from which they fled.

That is a stark slap in the face for the Albanese government, and it shows how hollow their words were about protecting people from nonrefoulement.

Interestingly, in Senate estimates this week, the home affairs secretary admitted that Australia would be in breach of its international agreements if it permitted people to be returned to the place they fled persecution via Nauru. This is called chain refoulement.

But again, they had no answer to that being exactly what the Nauruan president said that they intended.

The Migration Amendment Bill 2024 that passed last November contained the laws that allow our government to pay third countries to resettle asylum seekers. You note that up to 80,000 people living here could be affected.

As it stands now, can we expect this initial deportation of three men to be the first among many? And is this a law to deal with the people here now, or will it also affect future asylum-seeking arrivals?

This is a test run by the Albanese government, cheered on by Peter Dutton’s opposition, for a potentially much expanded program with Nauru and perhaps, and this is a credible fear, a fresh program with Papua New Guinea, similar to the unlawful and cruel Manus Island project.

While this initial deal with Nauru is dealing with a small group from NZYQ, the laws that were passed have far broader reach, as the department said up to 80,000 people. They reluctantly made that clear in the inquiry into that legislation.

There are about 40 asylum seekers who arrived in this country by boat now stranded in Port Moresby, the capital of Papua New Guinea, and there are now 100 asylum seekers on Nauru, despite all remaining detainees previously having been evacuated by June 2023.

You’ve tabled the Migration Amendment (Restoring Medevac) Bill 2025 in response to those stranded on PNG and the ongoing offshore detention in Nauru. What does your legislation seek to do?

We tabled legislation to see if Labor will still make its commitment that it made in 2019, to allow people whose life is seriously in jeopardy because of an untreated medical condition in Nauru or PNG to come to Australia for treatment.

This is called Medevac, and it was supported by Labor, and it became law in 2019, and we know that dozens of lives were saved.

Our legislation seeks to reopen that lifeline for people in Nauru or PNG, many of whom I know from direct contact, have genuinely life-threatening conditions.

It has been so frustrating to watch Labor in government refuse to bring forward that legislation themselves and instead run to Peter Dutton’s drum.

So, that’s been debated? 

We tabled that legislation in the last sitting week, and there is potentially an opportunity for it to pass through parliament when we return for our parliamentary session over the budget.

But in many ways, we tabled the legislation in order for civil society to try and force Labor to commit to that in any new parliament.

In December last year, you visited the 40-odd asylum-seeking men and their families stranded in PNG, who are surviving on inadequate funding. Most Australians don’t even know our government has dumped them there.

How are these men at present?

These men are in deep distress. The meagre support with which they’ve been provided by PNG has been withdrawn.

Their secure accommodation, which can be a life and death matter in a violent city like Port Moresby, is in the process of being taken from them by the PNG government, because Australia is not providing sufficient assistance.

Many of them have severe and debilitating mental illnesses, some are too sick to engage with third parties or to leave their rooms. Their access to medical support at a PNG hospital has been withdrawn, which means lifesaving heart medication and diabetes medication is not available.

One man was in distress due to a large untreated tumour on his neck.

This is a cohort of people who have been literally tortured by the Australian government through the proxy of the arrangements with PNG for over a decade.

And lastly, David, paying to resettle asylum seekers in third countries was part of the three-bill package of draconian migration laws the Albanese government passed late last year.

Looking at these developments, where do you see this all heading following the next election? And considering it was Labor that passed the most draconian migration laws in decades, is there a better major party option in terms of just outcomes for asylum seekers?

When this legislation went through parliament, the Coalition eventually supported it, because they are extremely keen to have these extreme powers handed to them.

It is not just the potential to deport up to 80,000 people. There are also powers to provide travel bans for any country in the world, effectively reinstating the White Australia policy and other onshore detention powers.

The prospect of these powers being routinely and grossly abused by either a future Labor government or at the more extreme end, a future Dutton government, is very real.

That is why it is essential that the next parliament needs to have a powerful progressive crossbench that can hold these parties to account.