Australian High Court Rules Against Government in NZYQ Detention Compensation Case

Australia's High Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday against the Commonwealth's attempt to invoke a common law defence against a false imprisonment claim brought by Safwat Abdel-Hady, an Austrian citizen detained unlawfully for approximately 18 months. The government had argued that detaining officers should not be held liable because they were acting in accordance with a 2004 High Court precedent — the Al-Kateb ruling — that authorised indefinite detention of non-citizens even where deportation was impossible. The court rejected this argument, with the majority finding it would amount to an 'inversion, if not a perversion, of constitutional principle' and would undermine individuals' ability to seek redress when executive power is exceeded. The ruling follows the landmark November 2023 NZYQ decision, which found indefinite immigration detention unlawful and triggered the release of more than 340 non-citizens who could not be removed from Australia. Legal advocates estimate that hundreds of former detainees from the NZYQ cohort could now bring similar claims, with the Australian Lawyers Alliance citing the 2017 Manus Island class action settlement of $70 million as a reference point for the potential scale of liability. The government stated it was 'carefully considering the judgment and its implications,' while the opposition described the ruling as a 'disaster' for taxpayers. The decision does not automatically entitle all affected individuals to compensation but removes a key defence the government had sought to rely upon.