2025-02-16
The Albanese Government announced today it will force people in Australia to Nauru after bribing the country with an undisclosed amount of money.
The Albanese Labor Government, at the end of last year, worked hand-in-hand with Peter Dutton’s Coalition to push through the most extreme anti-migrant and anti-refugee policies Australia has seen in a generation.
One of these laws has allowed the Labor Government to bribe countries, like Nauru, to take up to 80,000 people who currently live in Australia. Once they arrive in Nauru, the law gives them no protection from being jailed or returned to the country they fled in fear of persecution.
An Australian offshore detention centre has operated in Nauru for over a decade. Along with a detention centre that previously operated in Papua New Guinea, Australia’s so-called ‘offshore processing regime’ has been directly linked to 14 deaths, including a murder by guards.
In January this year, the UN Human Rights Committee found, in two cases brought by people held in offshore detention, that Australia is responsible for people transferred offshore under the existing regime.
Senator David Shoebridge, Greens spokesperson for Immigration and Multiculturalism, said: “The Albanese Government's attempt to run to the right of Dutton is cruel and wrong in principle, but it also won't work politically.
“This posturing by Labor doesn’t build their brand, all it does is legitimise Dutton’s brutal rhetoric on migration and citizenship.
“No one is in immigration detention because they have committed a crime. They are in immigration detention because of a visa issue.
“Today’s announcement entrenches a two-class legal system where you can be subject to arbitrary detention and forced to a country you have no connections to because of where you were born.
“Dozens of other countries face far more pressing immigration issues than Australia, yet no other country has decided to bribe other countries to take people without any regard for human rights.
“What we are seeing is the Albanese Government picking and choosing who gets human rights. When you start picking and choosing who gets human rights, it takes us down a divisive and dehumanising path.
“The Albanese Government has shown no interest in standing up to Dutton and protecting multiculturalism in Australia. When it comes to migration and refugees they have no red lines.
“Make no mistake, history has told us what will happen next: people will die, families will be separated, and the major parties will still blame migrants for problems they created.”