The Anti-Fairness Bill Explained

This blog is designed to provide a plain-language explainer to help community members understand the proposed new laws and what they could mean. It does not constitute legal advice. If you believe these changes may affect you, we strongly encourage you to seek guidance from your legal representative.

What is the Anti-Fairness Bill?

On 26 August 2025, the Government introduced the Home Affairs Legislation Amendment (2025 Measures No. 1) Bill 2025 (1) in the lower house of Parliament – the House of Representatives.

The Bill would expand the powers the Government established with their three brutal Bills (2) that were rushed through Parliament in the last sitting week of 2024.

These laws gave the Government new powers to make paid arrangements with other countries to accept people Australia seeks to deport, forcing people to cooperate with their deportation, and to limit people’s rights in immigration detention.

The new Anti-Fairness Bill aims to make those powers stronger by removing people’s right to natural justice (or fair decision making) when the government uses their new powers to make arrangements with other countries to accept people, and to force people to cooperate with their own deportation. It also retrospectively validates some migration decisions that were made before the case of NZYQ.

What would the Anti-Fairness Bill do?

If it passes Parliament, the new Anti-Fairness Bill will mean that:

When making arrangements to deport someone to a third country, the Government doesn’t have to tell the person they are making the arrangement or give them an opportunity to respond – removing their legal protections against government errors.
When giving a person a direction to cooperate with their own deportation, the government doesn’t need to tell them ahead of time or ask them if there are reasons they can’t follow the direction.
Previous visa decisions made under now outdated laws are retrospectively validated, even though those decisions might have been legally challenged after the NZYQ case. Simply put, before NZYQ, most decision makers thought it was likely that the individual would be subject to indefinite detention if their visa was cancelled and made their decision on that basis.. However, as indefinite detention has been deemed unlawful, such people now likely face punitive bridging visas or removal to a third country, such as Nauru, bringing into question whether those decisions were made correctly. The Government can also continue to prosecute criminal charges that were brought as a result of incorrect decisions, validating retrospective criminality.

The Bill is clearly designed to shield the government from accountability, and to legislate its way out of cases that are already in the courts. It prevents people from taking potential legal actions that may have stopped them from being deported.

Why does this matter?

One of the basic legal protections that everyone in Australia has is the right to natural justice. Natural justice is the right to fairness in government decisions, including the right to be told about and given the opportunity to respond to those decisions. The powers involve the making of life-altering decisions that might result in removal to another country forever, serious harm, loss of medical treatment or permanent family separation.

The principle of natural justice is a cornerstone of Australia’s legal system. Removing the right to natural justice sets a dangerous precedent for the way the law treats not just people seeking asylum and refugees, but everyone in this country.

There are constant successful challenges to many migration decisions where natural justice has not been afforded to the visa applicant or holder in Australia’s current system and serves as a source of protection for many, which is another reason this is so concerning.

Who will this affect?

The Government is saying that this will only affect a very small number of people with criminal histories who they are planning to deport to a third country, like Nauru (known as the ‘NZYQ cohort’). However, that is not true. The Bill strips the right to natural justice in the use of the powers that were established by the brutal Bills that were passed late last year. We know that the power of these laws can be used against a broad range of people, including anyone on a bridging visa E that was granted on departure grounds. The government also has the freedom to designate any type of visa it wants to apply these powers to. We know from a Senate inquiry hearing into those Bills that they could affect over 80,000 people (3), and because this new Anti-Fairness Bill relates to those powers, it is reasonable to expect it could affect the same number of people.

What happens next?

The Bill has been tabled in the House of Representatives, which is the lower house of Parliament. The government has the numbers to pass it there, after which it will go to the Senate – the upper house of Parliament – for debate. To have enough votes for the Bill to pass the Senate, the government would need the support of the Coalition. It is not clear when the Government will seek to pass the Bill, but it is likely to be next week.

For more detailed information, see:

https://www.hrlc.org.au/explainers/explainer-the-anti-fairness-bill/

We would like to thank the Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS) for helping us to compile this plain language explainer.

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r7363
Labor’s Brutal Bills, ASRC 2024, https://asrc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Labors-Brutal-Bills.pdf
More than 80,000 at risk of deportation from Australia under Labor bill likened to UK’s failed Rwanda plan, Guardian Australia 22 November 2024, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/nov/21/more-than-80000-at-risk-of-deportation-from-australia-to-third-countries-under-labors-new-bill-ntwnfb?CMP=share_btn_url