Ogy Simic, head of advocacy at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, which procured the transcript, said: “This secrecy is exactly what Labor criticised the Coalition about when they were in opposition: dodgy contracts, secrecy, and cover-ups that erode public trust.”

In the interview he gave earlier this year, Adeang claimed the people due to be deported had been living comfortably in the Australian community and were expected to do the same in Nauru. He also insisted none of the deportees were refugees, despite contrary claims by non-government organisations working with the cohort who say many of them are refugees or stateless.

“The transcript reveals two different stories are being told,” Shoebridge said.

Adeang’s remarks also prompted the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Shoebridge and Pocock to claim Nauru could send refugees back to countries where they could be harmed – a breach of non-refoulement obligations, which prohibit states from forcing people to return to a country where they risk persecution.

The Albanese government has so far deported at least three people to Nauru and redetained about 20 from the cohort, but is still facing High Court challenges about the arrangement.

In its response to one of the latest challenges that was published this week, the Commonwealth argues that Australian laws do not require the government to ask whether a country is a “prudent … place to send them” or consider whether the people will be harmed after being deported.

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It says the interim agreement with Nauru made it clear that the Pacific island nation has accepted “responsibility to provide support to settled persons to achieve minimum outcomes in line with Nauruan standards of living”.

“Resettled persons are entitled to ‘remain in the Republic for a minimum period of 30 years’ while being ‘permitted to depart and re-enter the Republic’,” the response says.

“A person who can live in Nauru in those circumstances has plainly been ‘removed’ from Australia. There is no factual foundation for any suggestion that Australia exercises ongoing control over persons who have resettled in Nauru (and the existence of any such control is denied).”

Pocock called for the government to be more transparent. “It shouldn’t take senators reading a transcript into Hansard to actually provide the public with some transparency about what’s what’s happening,” he said.

“But here we are in 2025, a government that loves secrecy, is addicted to secrecy, and that needs to change.”

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