A Labor-majority Senate committee raised concerns about new laws that do away with the obligation to provide non-citizens facing deportation to Nauru procedural fairness, in a report tabled hours after the legislation passed Parliament. Source: ABC News.
Labor rushed the bill through Parliament last week in a bid to bolster its powers to deport up to 354 members of the so-called NZYQ cohort to the island under a potentially mutli-billion-dollar deal signed last month.
The changes mean rules of natural justice – which in practice refers to the requirement to give people subject to a decision a fair hearing – won’t apply in cases where the government has “third country reception arrangements”.
It will also apply retrospectively, with three men currently challenging the government’s plans to send them to Nauru in the courts.
The deal signed with Nauru is set to cost Australia around $2.5 billion over 30 years, with government officials confirming multi-million-dollar payments will continue for three decades if the agreement is upheld.
But the committee tasked with assessing legislation against individual liberties, the rule of law, and parliamentary scrutiny standards said the government did not “sufficiently justify” its proposal to exclude the rules of natural justice and its retrospective application.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has previously argued the laws reiterate what was already established in a court ruling earlier this year, which is that the process of entering into a third-country reception arrangement is not predicated on the obligation to provide those affected by the agreement procedural fairness.
But the committee said the principle of natural justice, described as “a fundamental common law principle”, had two tenets: the entitlement to a fair hearing and a rule against bias in decision-making.
The report said it was unclear if any of the justifications put forward in the judgement applied to the bias rule and that it did not “support the exclusion of the principle that decision-makers should both be, and appear to be, impartial”.
A snap three-hour Senate hearing on the bill was held on Wednesday evening, but it accepted no formal submissions and only departmental officials were called for questioning.
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Labor senators warned laws bolstering powers to deport hundreds to Nauru weren’t sufficiently justified (By Maani Truu, ABC News)
