Australian Attorney General Michelle Rowland is using her legal powers to help two Indonesian men overturn their past convictions for people smuggling. Anto and Samsul Bahar were children when they were arrested on asylum seeker boats between 2010 and 2012. At the time, they were among hundreds of Indonesian minors who were wrongly identified as adults.

Police used a discredited wrist X-ray technique to determine their ages, which led to a series of legal errors. Because of this, children as young as 13 were sent to high-security adult prisons before they were eventually released and returned to Indonesia.

Rowland's recent referral means that a Western Australian court will now re-examine the cases of Anto and Samsul Bahar. Meanwhile, a separate ruling in federal court has ordered the government to pay millions of dollars in compensation to other individuals who were also held in adult detention by mistake.