‘It’s rushed, it’s secretive’: Burke quietly seeks to strip deportees of fair process

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke has been accused of secretly rushing through laws that will strip foreign-born criminals of their right to fair process when the government tries to deport them to a third country.

An hour before Burke stood with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to reveal details of Iran’s involvement in antisemitic attacks on Tuesday, he introduced a bill that would stop natural justice applying to former immigration detainees the government is trying to deport to Nauru.

The bill is Labor’s latest attempt to stem the ongoing fallout from a 2023 High Court case that ruled indefinite detention was unlawful, forcing the release of hundreds of convicted criminals from immigration detention because they could not be deported to their country of origin.

The Albanese government is now fighting three legal challenges brought by men set to be deported to Nauru, while several other released detainees have gone on to commit further crimes in the community. One man was charged over a murder in Melbourne in June.

But Burke’s quiet introduction of the latest bill has brought on an onslaught of criticism, including from the Greens and Coalition, who complained they were not briefed. “It’s rushed, it’s secretive, it’s chaotic,” Opposition Leader Sussan Ley said on Tuesday.

A group of human rights organisations described the bill as “yet another baseless attack on the rights of migrants” that would strip people’s rights to challenge bureaucratic decisions that affected them, even if those decisions were incorrect.

The Albanese government did not issue any alerts, statements or media releases about the legislation on Tuesday, as it often does when it introduces new laws. Burke’s office pointed to the minister’s reading speech introducing the bill in parliament on Tuesday.

“Procedural fairness is a fundamental principle in many areas of decision-making,” Burke said. “However, these provisions can and are being used by non-citizens to delay and frustrate their removal.”

He said the law would ensure a person’s removal was swift and effective once they had exhausted all other options to remain in Australia.

Ley accused the Albanese government of failing to fix the issue. “It’s the fifth time that Labor has been forced to introduce emergency legislation in this manner,” she told reporters in Canberra.

The bill is likely to pass with the Coalition’s support in the Senate. Burke last year struck a deal with the opposition to pass the original package of laws allowing the government to pay third countries such as Nauru to take the former detainees.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge on Wednesday said the rules of natural justice were a cornerstone of Australia’s legal system. “The Albanese Government has legislated itself into a corner where its answers keep getting crueler and crueler, now to the point of denying people a fair hearing and equality under the law,” he said.

Human rights groups and refugee advocates were also dismayed. Jane Favero, deputy chief executive of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, compared the move to US President Donald Trump’s deportation regime.

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