ALP’s Nauru solution faces High Court test

Labor’s bid to deport foreign criminals freed under the NZYQ ruling to Nauru is being challenged in the High Court, in a major blow to the Albanese government’s new third country removal powers.

Immigration Minister Tony Burke. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.

You can now listen to The Australian's articles.

Labor’s bid to deport to Nauru foreign criminals freed under the NZYQ ruling is being challenged in the High Court, in a blow to the Albanese government’s new third-country removal powers.

The Human Rights Law Centre lodged an application in the nation’s highest court late on Friday to halt the deportation of a man scheduled to be flown to Nauru on Monday, arguing the decision to cancel his visa was made unlawfully.

The challenge comes as The Australian revealed that an American double murderer convicted over a contract killing had been spared deportation under Labor’s updated ministerial ­direction.

Human Rights Law Centre associate legal director Laura John said the third-party removal laws introduced by Immigration Minister Tony Burke would set a “dangerous precedent for the kind of treatment refugees and migrants are subjected to”.

“No one should be permanently exiled to a country that is not their home. Ripping people from their lives and stranding them offshore is a cruel, lifelong punishment,” she said.

The challenge comes as the release of US citizen Robert ­Michael Main from immigration detention after an Administrative Review Tribunal decision last month raised concerns about the strength of ministerial direction 110, reissued by ousted immigration minister Andrew Giles.

The ART ruled that Main had strong ties to the community and no longer posed a risk, overturning the federal government’s push to deport him because of his criminal history. Main was described as showing “no remorse” when he applied to have his three life sentences overturned in 1999, repeatedly denying he was involved in the death of ­accused drug smuggler Anthony Cameron in Long Bay Prison.

Main told a court he was “not responsible in any way” for the death, but a jury convicted him.

The American was on remand for another murder charge over his role in a fatal shooting during an armed robbery of a drug dealer’s house when he killed Cameron.

In a NSW Supreme Court judgment from 1999 in which Main applied to have his sentence for the two murders and an armed robbery commuted, the court ruled that he needed to display a “greater degree of rehabilitation” before he was granted freedom.

Main succeeded in having his sentence reduced in 2008, granting him a pathway to parole.

The court found that Cameron’s death may not have been the “contract killing” it was once believed to be.

“There is room for doubt that the death of Mr Cameron was quite the cold, calculated, planned murder of a would-be witness as I had previously thought,” the judgment said.