Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has confirmed that a small number of refugees from Nauru are in the process of being transferred and resettled in Cambodia, as the Abbott government faces another High Court challenge on the legality of detaining asylum seekers in a third country.
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The Human Rights Law Centre has commenced a case in the High Court of Australia on behalf of 10 asylum seekers that challenges the lawfulness of the offshore detention arrangements in Nauru. The families are currently being held in Darwin and are desperate not to be sent back to the Nauruan camps, Daniel Webb, the Human Rights Law Centre's director of legal advocacy, said.
"They've all described conditions inside the centre as abhorrent," Mr Webb said.
"Their time detained on Nauru has clearly taken a toll on them and on their children. The United Nations, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the recent Moss review all make clear the Nauru detention centre is unsafe and unsuitable for children and families."
The case aims to prevent their return to detention on Nauru; declare that their detention on Nauru would be unlawful; and restrain the government from continuing to make payments to Transfield Services under the current arrangements. This is the ninth High Court case against the Minister for Immigration since last year.
Meanwhile, a group of four refugees are also in Darwin as they await to be transferred to Cambodia under a resettlement deal worth $40 million that was signed by the Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen in September last year.
Mr Dutton said there was a "small group" of people who will go across to Cambodia.
"We have an arrangement with Cambodia, so people on Nauru we will try and transition them across to Cambodia," Mr Dutton told 2GB radio on Thursday morning.
"We have been very clear about it. Those people who have arrived illegally into Australia by boat won't be staying in this country. They are either up on Nauru or if they are single males they are up in Papua New Guinea and they won't be coming to our country."
Mr Dutton said the economy in Cambodia was transitioning and resettling refugees in a third country would help them start a new life.
"Hopefully they will be in Cambodia shortly," he said.
The refugees - an Iranian couple, an Iranian man and a Rohingya man - arrived in Darwin on Sunday and they are staying at immigration accommodation near Darwin airport.
A source told Fairfax Media on Wednesday that they are expected to be flown to Cambodia within two weeks.
