The Anthony Albanese government is rushing through new laws to make it easier to deport people.
The new bill gives the government powers to deport people who had been in permanent immigration detention, which the High Court in 2023 found to be illegal.
The Asylum Seekers Resource Centre (ASRC) said on September 1 the proposed laws are designed to make it easier to strip people of their legal rights by removing their ability to challenge unfair decisions relating to their asylum claims.
It described the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures 1) Bill as “a cruel attack on migrants, refugees and people seeking asylum” and “a serious threat to the rule of law and all of our fundamental legal and human rights”. It paves the way for mass deportations to Nauru.
Labor, with Coalition support, has already passed new laws to extend offshore detention and expand deportations to third countries, like Nauru and Papua New Guinea. They also made sure to give themselves immunity from being sued by deportees.
“This new bill is the next step: clearing the path to rip people out of our communities and to exile them, tearing families apart and destroying lives,” ASRC said.
Home affairs minister Tony Burke travelled to Nauru in the last week of August to sign a deal in which the Pacific Island nation would take at least 400 people that the Labor government has decided cannot stay here.
Nauru is being offered nearly half a billion dollars now and another $70 million every year to take Australia’s deportees.
According to the ASRC, people on bridging visas are at immediate risk.
The bill stops asylum seekers from challenging a decision, even if the government has made a serious mistake. It can order people to cooperate with their own deportation; it will be able to validate visa decisions that were made under the old law that the High Court threw out as illegal; and it can prosecute criminal charges on a person brought as a result of incorrect decisions.
“This is a Trump-like move in its blatant disregard for the courts,” ASRC said. “The Albanese government is continuing to remove scrutiny, strip people of rights and shield themselves from accountability.”
ASRC said that removing the right to natural justice from decisions about deportation to third countries “marks a fundamental departure from how Australian law currently operates. It sets a precedent for the removal of basic legal protections.”
It said the government “has already made factual errors in such cases” and that “this Bill would remove accountability for correcting them and deny people the right even to be notified, as well as to respond”.
Like the laws that were rushed through late last year, this bill, which is “extremely broad”, removes natural justice for decisions made under last year’s new powers. “Despite assurances it would affect only a small number of people, in reality it could apply to tens of thousands of people.”