RNZ Pacific reported on 9 September 2026 that the Australian government had released the memorandum of understanding under which Nauru, which the United Nations now lists as Naoero, is to take people from the group known as the NZYQ cohort: non-citizens released after the High Court held in 2023 that Australia could not keep detaining people whose removal was not reasonably foreseeable. The memorandum was signed on 29 August 2025, when the Home Affairs minister, Tony Burke, met Nauru’s President, David Adeang, his cabinet and the Nauruan Parliament. The government had declined for months to publish it. In a cover letter written the week before RNZ’s report, the Environment Minister, Murray Watt, said the government had reconsidered “due to recent events”, described the release as an “action to mitigate the potential harm”, and wrote: “The Minister [Burke] is now satisfied that the public interests weigh towards releasing this document.” The terms, as RNZ reported them:
- Who Nauru accepts. Nauru may unilaterally refuse a “proposed person” only in exceptional circumstances, and otherwise accepts people “without any reservation in relation to age, past offences, health conditions or other characteristics”. A refusal must rest on “a serious and immediate risk to the public health or national security” of Nauru.
- Conditions on arrival. People are not to be detained, separated from the community or generally restricted in their movement, and may leave at any time. They have work rights and “modest” support for the cost of living.
- Protection against onward return. A person who receives a long-stay visa, with a term of thirty years, becomes a “settled person”, and Nauru commits not to send or return a settled person to another country where he or she would be in danger or at risk of chain refoulement. That status depends on holding the visa, whose terms Nauru could change in consultation with Australia.
- Cost. Mr Burke said in August 2025 that the arrangement would give Nauru AU$2.5 billion over thirty years. ABC News reported in May 2026 that Australia will pay AU$70 million a year, that a trust of AU$388 million had been set up, and that Nauru had by then drawn AU$30.5 million from it; SBS News and AAP have reported a commitment of AU$408 million upfront. Home Affairs officials told a Senate hearing that the payments would be audited annually and reviewed every five years.
Sources: RNZ Pacific, 9 September 2026 · Minister for Home Affairs, Statement on Nauru MOU, 29 August 2025 · ABC News, 29 May 2026 · SBS News, 25 November 2025 · AAP, 25 November 2025
What the government says
The government presents the arrangement as a matter of community safety and of the integrity of the visa system. The minister’s statement on the memorandum says that it “contains undertakings for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia”, and quotes him: “Anyone who doesn’t have a valid visa should leave the country.” Announcing the first deal with Nauru early in 2025, as ABC News reported it, he said there was “nothing more important to this government than community safety”, and: “The NZYQ cohort consists of people who broke Australian laws and in doing so surrendered their rights to stay in Australia.” At the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ meeting in Palau, which he attended from 31 August to 3 September 2026, the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said: “If people who aren’t Australian citizens commit crimes in Australia, we’re entitled to implement Australian law, just as other countries are.” On the payments, the department’s head of immigration, Clare Sharp, told the Senate: “The intention is to create a stream of funding.” She added: “Nauru can then use it to build its economic base and its future economic sustainability as a country.”
David Shoebridge, the Greens senator who has pursued the documents, told RNZ that the release scratched only the surface. “The government has been far from forthright,” he said. He said the government continues to resist producing a separate memorandum that sets up the financial arrangements, and that the protections could change with a future government of Nauru: “it just has to give the Australian government notice and an opportunity to consult.”
What has happened on Nauru
ABC News reported on 19 July 2026 that, under laws introduced in March, community monitoring officers had been given powers to restrain, search and monitor people transferred from Australia, “including the use of ‘reasonable force’”, and that days after the broadcaster reported whistleblowers’ concerns about their safety in June, the laws were amended to extend those powers to any person on the island. When it introduced the laws, the Nauru government said they were to ensure public safety and the “effective management of transferees residing in our communities under arrangements with other countries”. Asked about the change, a Home Affairs spokesperson told the ABC: “Nauru is a sovereign country and decisions about its laws are a question for its parliament.” In June the Nauru government said in a statement that the cohort are not detained: “They have a Nauruan visa and as such have the same rights as any other resident,” and, unlike Nauruans, “they are provided with accommodation, a fortnightly allowance, and free transport for shopping and other travel around the island.”
The ABC reported that, as of 4 June, 12 people had been issued Nauruan visas and sent there, among them a person who uses a wheelchair, and it understood that a further 37 had been re-detained and were awaiting removal to Nauru, with nine more issued visas but not yet detained. Members of the cohort facing removal have brought cases in the Federal Court; in many of them, according to Sanmati Verma, legal director of the Human Rights Law Centre, they argue that removal to Nauru is unconstitutional because it is a form of punishment. Ms Verma noted that the change to the policing law coincided with those cases. On 6 May 2026 the High Court unanimously dismissed an appeal against a removal to Nauru, holding that the Migration Act authorised it and that, in so operating, the Act did not contravene Chapter III of the Constitution. The Coalition’s page on Australia sets out that decision.
The law the arrangement operates under
Australia ratified the Convention against Torture on 8 August 1989 and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 13 August 1980, and acceded to the Refugee Convention on 22 January 1954. Nauru ratified the Convention against Torture on 26 September 2012 and acceded to the Refugee Convention on 28 June 2011. It signed the Covenant in 2001 and has not ratified it.
The commitment against onward return speaks to the risk the Committee against Torture describes: “the person at risk should never be deported to another State from which the person may subsequently face deportation to a third State in which there are substantial grounds for believing that the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” On the earlier offshore arrangements, the Human Rights Committee, deciding in 2024 which parts of a complaint it could examine, found that the elements of Australian control over the regional processing centre on Nauru “went beyond a general situation of dependence and support, and that the transfer of the authors to Nauru did not extinguish the State party’s obligations towards them under article 9 of the Covenant”. Australia had argued that it “does not exercise jurisdiction or effective control over the authors in Nauru, in law or in fact”. The finding concerned the authors’ detention at the centre after their transfer in 2014, under the Covenant’s article on liberty, not the NZYQ arrangement. The Coalition’s page on Australia sets out those decisions and the interim arrangement with Nauru in force since February 2025.
What is still being investigated, as of 8 November 2026
The text of the memorandum itself. The Coalition has not been able to read it, and its terms are given here as RNZ Pacific reported them. The Australian Parliament’s website, where documents tabled in the Senate are published, could not be reached in a way that respected its access rules.
The separate memorandum on the financial arrangements, which Senator Shoebridge says the government continues to resist producing.
How the commitment against onward return will be applied. In an interview in Nauruan given in February 2025, months before the memorandum was signed, President Adeang said, in a transcript obtained by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre that two senators read into the Senate record in November 2025: “Thirty years is what they are given, unless of course, we, your government, find a way for them to move around, for example, they get to go home.” He added: “The problem now is, Australia cannot return them home, these people are what you would refer to as stateless.” Neither government has released an official translation. The Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, said the government’s own translation had been made by a translator who was not accredited and might not be entirely accurate.
How many people have been sent to Nauru under the arrangement since June, and how many hold the thirty-year visa on which the protection against onward return depends. ABC News gives about 354 members of the cohort released after the High Court’s 2023 decision, “the bulk of whom have been convicted of crimes or had visas cancelled on character grounds”, of whom about 280 were expected to be resettled on Nauru; RNZ describes the agreement as covering more than 350 people. The two differ on how many the decision itself freed: RNZ puts that at around 150. The Coalition has found no official figure for removals since 4 June.
The outcome of the cases in the Federal Court.
Sources: RNZ Pacific, 9 September 2026 · Minister for Home Affairs, Statement on Nauru MOU, 29 August 2025 · Prime Minister of Australia, 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders’ Meeting in Palau, 31 August 2026 · ABC News, 19 July 2026 · ABC News, 29 May 2026 · AAP, 25 November 2025 · SBS News, 25 November 2025 · United Nations Treaty Collection: Convention against Torture, Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Refugee Convention · Committee against Torture, General Comment No. 4, paragraph 12 · Human Rights Committee, M.I. and Others v Australia, CCPR/C/142/D/2749/2016, paragraphs 6.7, 6.8 and 9.9 · the Coalition’s page on Australia