Australia was warned that a 2013 deal to send asylum seekers for processing in Papua New Guinea would be found unconstitutional and leave the federal government's offshore detention regime significantly weakened, letters obtained by Fairfax Media show.
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Sir Robert Woods, a former judge of the PNG National and Supreme Courts, wrote to then prime minister Kevin Rudd and opposition leader Tony Abbott in July 2013 warning Australia would be embarrassed by a ruling that sending asylum seekers to PNG amounted to an illegal deprivation of liberty because they were not guilty of any criminal offence.
A former acting NSW District Court judge, Sir Robert helped draft the country's constitution before independence in 1975.
PNG's Supreme Court ruled in April detention on Manus was illegal and unconstitutional, with a subsequent court process on resettlement and compensation leaving about 750 detainees in limbo.
The Turnbull government says Australia is not a party to the ongoing case but High Commission officials have attended hearings this month.
Days after Mr Rudd signed a deal with PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill to ensure no asylum seeker who came by boat would ever be resettled in Australia, Sir Robert warned both sides of Australian politics that a bilateral political agreement could not circumvent rights enumerated in Section 42 of the PNG constitution.
The "hardline" agreement, signed weeks after Mr Rudd rolled Julia Gillard ahead of the 2013 federal election, meant those processed on Manus would be settled in PNG if they were found to be refugees.
A series of letters from Sir Robert show he explained a subsequent memorandum of understanding between the two governments was a "legal fiction" and insufficient protection from a Supreme Court challenge to the deal.
He said eligibility requirements for PNG citizenship and land ownership made the plan problematic and could anger local communities.
"The whole scenario is a relic of the worst of past colonialism where a country like Australia waves a bag of money at a former colony and says to that country: 'Do as we tell you'," Sir Robert wrote.
The April decision said the Manus centre breached the constitutional rights of asylum seekers to personal liberty, vindicating the warnings.
This week, Sir Robert said he received no reply to the letters from the federal government or opposition at the time.
A former senior legal official within the PNG government, he assisted the assembly that drafted the PNG constitution and led an inquiry into student riots in PNG in 2001.
In a speech to the Samuel Griffith Society on Friday, Mr Abbott suggested that as opposition leader in 2011 he should have allowed the Gillard government to implement its Malaysian solution, allowing for processing of 800 asylum seekers to deter the flow of boats.
The speech surprised Labor figures, including senator Stephen Conroy, who said ongoing scandals on Nauru and Manus Island could have been avoided as part of the deal.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten called for cooperation on a Senate inquiry into offshore detention.
"It was the current Liberal government in opposition which opposed our plan, which I believe in large part has led to the failure so far in terms of some of the conditions we keep hearing about," he said.
"We don't want people being manipulated, abused, drowned at sea, [but] we don't support having policies which will incentivise people smugglers."
