The nation's top court will decide whether the Australian government's cancellation of a lease for a new Russian embassy was legal on national security grounds.

In 2023, Australia quickly passed laws to cancel Russia's lease on a plot of land where it planned to build an embassy a few hundred metres away from Parliament House in Canberra.

Russia rejected the cancellation of the 99-year lease, which was granted by the Australian government in 2008, as hostile action amounting to "Russophobic hysteria".

No developments were completed on the plot, but an official squatted on the land after the decision to frustrate any Australian effort to reclaim it.

Russia took the fight to the High Court, arguing the laws were unconstitutional because there was no evidence of a national security threat

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