Greens senator David Shoebridge says the home affairs amendment Tony Burke tabled this morning (without any fanfare, as you would expect) is a “cruel attack on refugees and migrants” aimed at stripping people of “the right to natural justice”.

This law is designed so that people can be forcibly removed to Nauru without having any right to
even see the application the government is making. It also removes their right to make
representations about why their removal would be unsafe, or explain to the Nauru government
why they should not be deported there.

When rights of natural justice are removed, critical matters like health concerns, family
connections and basic human decency get overridden, while damaging mistakes of fact are not
identified.

This legislation is even being made retrospective to address likely failures of natural justice that
have been raised in two separate court challenges to Labor’s efforts to forcibly remove people to
Nauru.

Shoebridge said Australia knows how dangerous this is for people because while Australia won’t deport someone back to a country where they could face torture or death, Nauru will:

Everyone should be equal under the law, no matter where they are born, but that can only
happen if people are given the right to be heard before decisions are made about them.
We know there are active court cases on this issue and by making this law retrospective Labor
is trying to validate past illegal practices by Home Affairs and defeat these cases with another
legislative deal with the Coalition.

Nauruan President Adeang made it clear last year that he intends to send anyone Australia
deports there back to the country from which they originally fled.

People rightfully don’t want to go to Nauru because they know they will face the very real risk of
being forcibly returned to danger, and they surely have the right to be heard before that happens
to them.”