Okay, I want to move on to NHRU.
Prime Minister, this deal with the Naruan government for the cohort of asylum seekers that you haven't been able to do much with out.
Of the Let's start with this deal that was signed between Australia and NARU. What do we know about it?
Yeah, So we first heard about this deal through a post on the Home Affairs website about a week ago. It was late on a Friday night, basically just saying that the Home Affairs Minister had been over there had signed a deal that will involve Australia paying Nharu a sum of money in exchange for a group of asylum seekers that are currently in Australia receiving thirty year visas to go live and stay live in the community in Nuru. So at the time when it was announced, we didn't
have a whole lot of information about it. The actual deal, the memorandum understanding wasn't revealed to the public and we saw kind of ministers and the Prime Minister batting away questions about it.
Why so much secrecy around that deal?
Toadley's secret. You're just asking me about it on national deal?
You know I will contest that there was no release put out. It was quite little website. Well, well, okay, it was out there, and it was wasn't easy to find.
Albanezy was asked about and kind of just talked about complexities and details without revealing much.
There's complexities and detail here, including the number of people who go. There's arrange or provisions as part of.
It, particularly in terms of how many people were going to be taken by NRU.
So do they get the four hundred million even if they take no asylum seekers?
There are arrangements in place, Patricia, And we have an arrangement between.
How the payments would actually work and whether the payments were kind of based on how many people were there.
Like does it just keep going or is it a timeframe?
No, it doesn't, Patricia. And it's an arrangement between our government and the No Rule government.
But will you make the details of the payments clear for how long they get seventy million a year?
It's an arrangement between It's not government and No Rule government and it's.
And then we found a lot more information at a send inquiry last week that revealed the actual financial cost of this deal. So we found out there's an upfront payment that's going to be more than four hundred million dollars going to NAURU once the first person is deported from Australia to NAHRU, and then also payments of up to seventy million dollars per year after that. So the whole deal over the thirty years is worth potentially two
point five billion dollars. There's huge amounts of money going towards NARU in order to take some people from Australia on thirty of visas.
Prominence to Anthony Albanezi insists the government's deal with the RUE wasn't secret, even though key details only emerged after it was signed. At the same time, Parliament has passed laws to speed up the path to sending people off shore, stripping them of their fundamental rights and protections during the
deportation process. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM today Stenham Sadler and the former immigration detainees Australia is desperate to deport and whether offloading into n RU is a breach of our legal obligations. It's Monday, September eighth. Can you tell me more about the group that this arrangement is targeted at. This is a group of former immigration detornees that were released in the community in twenty twenty three year.
Yeah, so this stems back to the High Court decision from November twenty twenty three, so is the n z YQ case.
The High Court has tonight revealed all seven of its judges agreed in definite immigration detention is unlawful.
They're surprised to see, yew.
These are people that were in immigration tension, but they were never actually going to go back to their home countries, so they were basically in indefinite detention and it was ruled that Australia can't do that, so they have to be released.
Over thirty five pages ruling imprisonment was penal or punitive that could only be used by courts a judging and punishing criminal guilt, claiming detention pending removal was legal as long as removal through deportation was possible.
So I think all up, there's about three hundred and fifty people that are caught up in that group, and basically over nearly the last two years, it's been a huge political problem more than anything for the government. The oppositions kind of targeted a lot and blamed the government
for these people being out in the community. And there's been a lot of rhetoric around the danger of these people being out in the community and I think the fear that if any further crimes happen that it'll be blamed on the government too.
The Opposition is calling on the Prime Minister to sack his Immigration minister immediately following revelations he was warned about a controversial direction that has allowed foreign born criminals to stay in Australia.
Anthony Albaneze needs to stop running a protection racket for Minister Giles and to start protecting.
The Australia because what he is doing to Australia is quite quite scary, and that's why the Prime Minister should show leadership and second.
But he's not and I think that is but I.
Think it is important to note not all of them have done crimes as well, but the people that have served a full prison sentence, if they were Australian citizens, they'd be in the community like normal and people are released every day for similar crimes normally, and it's not a big political issue. The only different thing here is these people are non citizens.
You mentioned last week DNA that we learned a bit more about the arrangement when Home Affairs officials appeared before a Senate committee. Particularly, we learn a fir bit about the price tag. What are the questions did they face.
There was a lot of kind of questions about the amounts of people that would be accepted, and part of the deal was nu taking everyone in this cohort, and it was kind of a real that it's not it's still kind of neuru's discretion to issue these visas to people, so it's not necessarily going to take that whole cohort. The memorandum of understanding that was signed last week YEP specified.
The number of individuals.
It is an agreement pursuant to the provision in the Act to consider.
Applications from the Australian Government for people in this cohort, and for NAURU to grant visas pursuant to that based on their decision about whether they would. So there's no figure, so they could take zero, they could right.
You found out a bit about how the payments will work. That was obviously the big question, and I think people were very shocked to find out it can be up to two point five billion dollars. You kind of had David Pocock saying it was bonkers.
Just like, I just want you to know, like the people out there, this sounds totally bonkers, right, like nuts.
Like this is an extraordinary amount money.
We all know it's expensive to house people, but I.
Think people genuinely really surprised that it was this much money going to this very tiny nation to take a group of people that is about kind of yeah, three hundred people, And often it is the finalantial side that gets across people more than the human element. There's a very real human element here. But I think getting that figure has helped people be a bit more outraged by it than they were just when we found out there was a deal in place.
And this deal is being paired with new legislation that expands Australia's deportation powers. Those laws passed the set at the end of last week. So what exactly do these new powers entail and how do they relate to this new arrangement with the route.
Therese are pretty extraordinary new powers, and that legislation that recently pass serves to constrict the rights to natural justice to this group of people in Australia, which is basic rights in the criminal justice system that have been taken away from these people. This horrific, monstrous bill.
You've never seen us people of color, migrants of color as equals.
There's been huge backlash from a range of human rights groups, refugee advocates, and legal organizations about this plan to deport people and around the stripping of these really basic and fundamental rights.
Australia's immigration regime is so brutal that even Trump points to it and said that's a good idea, we should do that too.
There's concerns around these powers the government have given themselves to. You can be deported based on a decision that was wrong, and then the pact government has the power to kind of overall that, and they've taken away all your avenue to appeal as well. The government have kind of justified by saying that a lot of people are using procedural
fairness to kind of slow the process. I think these exact words was kind of to frustrate their removal, to delay things, and I think the government has been frustrated by court proceedings around this. But that's also how it's meant to be functioning. So it's a lot of people being removed these basic rights to kind of speed up the process, I think is basically the aim, and to get people out of Australia as quickly as possible.
So what's the problem that the government is trying to solve for you? I mean, what do they think the process needs to be split up and that essentially these groups should have their legal rights denied. It's pretty extreme.
Yeah, I think it's just basically been that political problem that they've had since these people were ordered to be released by the High Court's kept popping up every time there has been another crime committed by someone that was released as part of that decision. It's become another political issue and it's just not going away. And I've tried it's almost been a bit of kind of a whack a mole game with the courts. They've tried a few
other things. They've tried electronic monitoring, they've tried getting people back in immigration detention, and it keeps either getting knocked back or stalled by the courts. So I think they're just looking a way to really completely wash the hands of these people and this issue and send them off to another country. Actually on visas, So it's really out of Australia's hands.
Coming up what life on Naru will look like for this group. And you've been reporting on australia official immigration detension for some time there and you've examined what life is actually like on l Arue for this group who will be sent there. They will have visas, the right to work, freedom of movement. So what can you tell me about what life might be like once they arrive.
Yeah, so Nuru is a tiny nation. It's about twelve thousand people, and there's a lot of poverty and the cost of living is extremely high. Basic bedgears, bottled water is very expensive. It's not an easy place to live. So there still are about one hundred asylum seekers in offshore processing on Naru at the moment, and they obviously are under different conditions, and this cohort will be they don't have the right to work and other rights like that.
But I'm in contact with some of those people and yeah, they just describe it extremely hard to get buy over there, and a lot of them are going without three meals a day. And they also say that people are very aware of what's happening with this deal. They're aware of who these people are and who the government have kind
of described them as being too. Obviously, a big part of this is these people being described as dangerous and appalling, and there are people in the script that haven't even committed a crime, but there's been a lot of rehtric about just how dangerous they are. And now you're kind of sending them off to a very small country to just live amongst the community. You can see a lot of issues with that, and issues with finding work as well to survive when you've kind of been described like
that by the big government nearby. Can see a lot of issues around that.
So what kind of support will they have once they arrive and in your estimation, does have the ability to support them?
We don't know a lot of detail about the support on office, similar to a lot of things about this deal. We do know that some chunk of the payments Australia sending is going directly to the new government to support
these people, but beyond that we don't know. There have been huge problems in the past with a lot of the huge amounts of money that are in the immigration detention system over there being misused and corruption issues, so there's always going to be ongoing concerns around that, and it's just a very low social economic country that will struggle with a new group. I think there's about one to four people in Nuru live below the basic needs
poverty line. Already. Healthcare is a massive concern. There's have been ongoing issues in Australia with bringing people onto mainland Australia who need medical treatment, bringing asylumn seekers. There's not really established healthcare offerings there and I think there's already existing problems and you're bringing potentially hundreds of new people there. I think there's huge concerns about being able to support them properly.
And what sort of questions does this phrase about Australia's obligations to these people. Australia won't resettle them, but they also can't return them to the country of origin for fear of being harmed. So do we still have a responsibility for their welfare even if Australia offloads them to a third country.
I think it's a great question and I think it's one that will be tested because I think Australia will very much argue that they don't after this. I think they'll say they've satisfied their obligations by finding a new country for them to live in. They've on a visa for thirty years, they've got rights to work. But I think there's a very strong argument that Australia does have a responsibility. We forcibly sent them over to this very
small nation. There is some obligation there, and it's as part of a deal where we're sending a lot of money. So I think there are going to be a lot of arguments that Australia does still have a very strong responsibility for their welfare. We're kind of following the rules around non refilment, so we can't send them back to a country they're going to face persecution, and that's why they found a fix in terms of Nuru and paying
a country to take them. But I think that just raises massive questions about the responsibility of Australia, and I think they're quite likely to be tested in some way or another. I think it raises really important questions about the prison system as well. I think people and have
served their prison sentence. Every day people are coming out of prison having done worse crimes, and a lot of people in this group and that scene is okay, but for some reason it's different, purely because these people come from different countries. So I think Australia has an obligation to help with the rehabilitation and reintegration sort of process with these people rather than just off showing them to a different country and washing our hands.
Danim, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks having me.
Also in the news, Victoria police say the stabbing deaths of two boys aged twelve and fifteen has all the hallmarks of a youth gang crime. The two children were found dead in cobble Banking, Malven's West over the weekend. Victoria Police say the alleged attackers fled the scene in a yet to be identified vehicle armed with machetes and edged weapons, and is urging anyone with information to come forward. And police in the UK have arrested hundreds of demonstrators
over the weekend under Britain's anti terror legislation. More than four hundred people were arrested on Saturday at a rally in London in support of the activist group of Palestine Action, many over the age of sixty. It's the latest round of the tensions of supporters of the pro Palestine group since it was banned by the UK as a terrorist organization in July after some of its members broke into a Royal air Force base and damaged military planes. This
has been seven am. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow