The Australian government is jointly responsible for Nauru’s media access policy for the immigration detention centre, departmental documents reveal, despite claims for years that it is solely an issue for Nauru.

The Australian government has repeatedly claimed it has no involvement in Nauru’s decisions around media access and specifically its repeated refusal to Australian outlets.

But the previously unpublished official arrangements, tendered to federal court as part of an affidavit in a Nauruan medical transfer case, reveal the notoriously restrictive media policy to be a joint effort.

“The governments of Australia and Nauru will agree to a media and visitor access policy and conditions of entry,” the document said. “Media seeking access to centre will be required to obtain permission from the [Nauruan] secretary for justice and to sign a media agreement.”

Nauru's notoriously strict detention centre media policy is actually in agreement with Australia, newly revealed 'administrative arrangements show. Australia has for years said media access is an issue for the Nauru govt. pic.twitter.com/v4ZDF6t3iK — Helen Davidson (@heldavidson) October 4, 2018

For more than five years Nauru has refused almost all media requests to obtain a visa for the island in order to report on Australia’s immigration detention system.

When questioned, the Australian government has maintained it has no involvement.

In 2014 the Nauruan government raised the application fee for a media visa from $200 to $8,000. The fee is not refundable even if the application is rejected. In recent years only the Australian, Sky News and Channel Nine’s A Current Affair have been granted access, and many other organisations have been turned down even before officially lodging an application.

The Sky News journalist Laura Jayes – whose application fee was waived by the Nauru government – has previously said she was told the high fee was specifically to discourage the ABC and Guardian Australia.

I went to Nauru in 2016 when it was charging a non-refundable visa application fee of $8000.



It was waived for Sky on the condition that we not report it. We did.



Nauru officials would openly admit the fee was to deter the ABC and Guardian



This is a little more blatant.. https://t.co/SXHIhGLb2d — Laura Jayes (@ljayes) July 2, 2018

In 2015 the minister for home affairs, Peter Dutton, said media access was “an issue for the Nauruan government”. He made the comments in response to criticism of the fee increase in a Senate report.

In 2016, after the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said a Labor government would allow media access to the centres on Nauru and Manus Island, Dutton accused him of being “tricky”.

“It’s an issue for the Nauruan government as to who they allow into their country,” Dutton said again. “The Australian government has no policy which restricts people, including journalists, from going to Nauru, and what Mr Shorten did last night was to be very tricky.”

In 2015 the head of Nauru’s government information office told the ABC’s Media Watch that visa decisions were not influenced by other governments.

“Details of applicants and government decisions, as well as statistical details, will not be provided to the Australian media, however it should be pointed out that all decisions on visa applications are a matter for our government and are not influenced by any other government,” he said.

“It is appropriate to remind you that Nauru is a sovereign nation and does not release details of internal matters internationally.”

The “administrative arrangements for regional processing and settlement arrangements in Nauru” sets out the implementation of the memorandum of understanding signed by the two countries in 2014. It was previously sought under freedom of information legislation in 2017, according to the Right to Know organisation.

The request was denied on the grounds of “documents affecting national security, defence or international relations”.

“Consultation with relevant departmental business areas, in relation to this FoI request, has confirmed that release of the document would or could reasonably be expected to damage the department’s working relationship with the government of Nauru,” the FoI officer told the applicant.

Paul Murphy, the chief executive of the journalists union, the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, said the claim that the Nauruan government was in charge of media access was “weak and flimsy”.

“In our view, the Australian government has actively sought to restrict media access to its offshore detention facilities, whether by restricting physical access or with punitive measures designed to intimidate and silence whistleblowers.”

George Newhouse, a human rights lawyer who has represented numerous asylum seekers and refugees and is principal lawyer at the National Justice Project, said it was “no surprise that our leaders want to restrict media access to the asylum seekers”.

“The way they are treated there is an abomination,” he said. “I am quite certain that the minister for home affairs wants to hide the disgraceful condition in which we keep men women and children seeking asylum when we render them to gulags in the Pacific.

“You only have look at the way that minister Dutton tried to criminalise doctors by imposing criminal sanctions on them through amendments to the Migration Act when they blew the whistle on the execrable conditions he was keeping people in on Nauru and Manus.”

A spokesman for the Department of Home Affairs said “right of entry to Nauru is determined by the government of Nauru”.