Mike Kelly (Eden-Monaro, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This legislation is a classic example of an answer in search of a question. Really, what are we talking about here? We have had a thin veneer of suggestions and insinuations made in the course of this debate that reflect on issues of national security and patriotism. It reminds me of the old expression that 'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel'. When it comes to national security, I defer to no-one in this chamber. I have spent the last 35 years of my life immersed in the security affairs of this nation. Nothing is more important to me than the safety of our people and our contribution, as good international citizens, to the safety of the world. In that context, I served 20 years in the Army and 10 years in the Reserves. When I was in the Army, I deployed to places like Somalia, Bosnia and Timor. I spent a year in Iraq. In government, I had responsibility for the transition of our operations in Afghanistan and spent a lot of time there. I have spent a great deal of my life immersed in the issues of internal conflict, civil war, counter-insurgency and terrorism. Above all, the one lesson I learnt from that experience is the importance of building social cohesion as the means to achieving national security.

The genius of Australia has been in the success of our multiculturalism and how we have constructed that. So what is broken that the government is trying to fix? They always talk about our multicultural society as being a shining light to the world. And we have reiterated time and again the comments of David Irvine, the former Director-General of ASIO, who was at pains to point out that, for example, our Muslim community is the first line of defence against terrorism and has been of great assistance in that effort. We have managed to achieve that by being inclusive, by opening our hearts and our arms to citizens of nations other than ours and by making something of that process.

I was just at a citizenship ceremony a couple of weeks ago, and to watch the faces of those people who voluntarily entered into that process of wanting to become Australian and the effect of that process itself in building their investment in this enterprise of ours—this Australia. To me, the Australian Citizenship Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Requirements for Australian Citizenship and Other Measures) Bill 2017 does the opposite. This attempt to change the citizenship process in this country is about exclusion and not inclusion. That is the heart of this effort at what is contained in this legislation. Instead of that message of inclusion and instead of that message of our appreciation of the multicultural and multilingual benefits that we had from the immigration process, we are sending the message, 'No, there're people out there that we want to make life harder for, that we are not confident in in being citizens of this country.'

I look at the various stories told, certainly, by members on this side and all of us of that experience in our electorates. Madam Deputy Speaker Bird, I know that in your own electorate you have this multicultural experience well reflected there. We've heard talk of the Snowy Mountains Scheme, for example, which sits in my electorate, which was the birthplace of the great multicultural expansion post Second World War where 100,000 migrants came to help build that scheme over those decades. All of them stayed in Eden-Monaro. In Cooma, for example, 15 per cent of the community—a country town—were born overseas. It's still quite a high level and does not mention those who are descendants of those who came here and helped build that multicultural society.

In Queanbeyan 18.4 per cent were born overseas. Our communities in Queanbeyan are such a wonderful part of what we have been able to create in marrying up the great sense of community, the benefits of a country town and the richness and diversity of those cultural groups that have come to us. There is a complete rainbow in Queanbeyan. It is the most cosmopolitan town in New South Wales outside of Sydney. We take great pride and joy in the community and cultural celebrations of that. The one big event of the year that brings it all together is the Carnivale in beautiful Queanbeyan Park, where we celebrate the music, the dancing and the food of all those groups. I take particular great interest in traversing those food stalls on that day! It is probably not in the best interest of my health, but it is beautiful food. It is a great example of the rich tapestry.

In country areas like mine quilting is a popular pastime. It is a big part of our rural culture. What we have done in Australia is very much like a beautiful patchwork quilt. We've taken those magnificent, colourful individual panels and we've stitched them together to create this wonderful whole. That takes love, patience, persistence and perseverance. To keep that success story rolling, we must continually work at this issue, constantly, in the signals that we send and the way we build this community.

I also look at the electorate of the Prime Minister himself, who has become the quintessential hollow man through the abandonment of all the principles he once espoused in these gesture politics that we've seen—like the pointless paper plebiscite or the overused wet leaf in abusing and cajoling the banks and the electricity companies. And how is that going?

In relation to our national security, we have the issues that have emerged out of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia with 50,000 breaches of money laundering provisions—directly associated with our national security, by the way—in funding terrorists. Where is the royal commission into that? Why isn't there more focus on that issue than this pointless paper exercise?

I come back to the Prime Minister's electorate. There are Holocaust survivors in his electorate who have gone to make magnificent contributions to this country. One in particular, Frank Lowy, who delivered the inaugural Australian Multicultural Council lecture in Canberra on 20 September 2012, who became one of our most success businessmen, creating great benefit to our economy and jobs and becoming a great philanthropist, came here as a refugee boy and a self-described boat person fleeing the Nazis. His father died in Auschwitz. He said he could hardly speak English. And what did he go on to achieve? His line on this was he wanted a more muscular approach to civics education, to teach everyone—not just those seeking citizenship or immigrants but the whole nation. There is a great deficiency in our system in teaching all of us civics and the values of our democracy. He also said, while it may be handy for a newcomer to know that Don Bradman was our greatest cricketer, it would be far more useful to have a bedrock understanding of what it means to be a citizen. That's one of the Prime Minister's own constituents, and he should draw from that experience. That's the sort of thing we need to embrace and encourage.

When they talk about values, what is it that they're going on about? Are we looking to the coalition to teach us values—the values of how people are treated on Manus and Nauru, or the values of how they treated veterans and pensioners in trying to cut their pensions, creating an underclass in this society? Are those the values that we're supposed to imbibe?

Interestingly, in these questions, I was really interested to see some of the effective brainwashing propaganda that they're trying to put out as part of their so-called values. One of these was on so-called clean coal technology in these questions as part of the test. I'll just read a couple of paragraphs out of that to give you the flavour of this. It says:

The worldwide coal industry allocates extensive resources to researching and developing new technologies and ways of capturing greenhouse gases. Efficiencies are likely to be improved dramatically, and hence CO2 emissions reduced, through combustion and gasification techniques which are now at pilot and demonstration stages.

Clean coal is another avenue for improving fuel conversion efficiency. Investigations are under way into super-clean coal … and ultraclean coal … Super-clean coal has the potential to enhance the combustion efficiency of conventional pulverised fuel power plants. Ultraclean coal will enable coal to be used in advanced power systems such as coal-fired gas turbines which, when operated in combined cycle, have the potential to achieve much greater efficiencies.

Defendants of mining point out that, environmentally, coal mining has two important factors in its favour. It makes only temporary use of the land and produces no toxic chemical wastes. By carefully preplanning projects, implementing pollution control measures, monitoring the effects of mining and rehabilitating mined areas, the coal industry minimises the impact on the neighbouring community, the immediate environment and long-term land capability.

Tremendous propaganda. This looks like something straight out of North Korea. Then, of course, the questions go on to try to embed that and emphasise that, in a brainwashing exercise. One example is:

Compared with ordinary coal, new, ‘clean’ coals may generate power

A more cleanly and more efficiently.

B more cleanly but less efficiently.

C more cleanly but at higher cost.

D more cleanly but much more slowly.

This is the sort of thing that we're seeing. Is this the type of exercise we want to put our people through in achieving citizenship? Let alone trying to understand that, because we know for a fact that hardly anyone on the coalition side does understand the issues. Otherwise we would have seen them embrace and act much more quickly and effectively on their own Finkel review, and we're still waiting. I might point out, of course, that the Finkel review emphasised that they needed to make a decision on clean energy technology, and that particular aspect of the recommendations was immediate: in the time line that it set for its recommendations, that was at the zero-month mark. Well, that zero-month mark has well and truly passed. So, in terms of the values, the information and the education standards, we don't get filled with confidence at the approach of this government to dealing with those issues.

Specifically in this legislation, one of the other values we'd be looking for would be emphasising the rule of law. We hear a lot about that from the coalition. What does this legislation do? It takes the minister out of the purview of review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, so what we're seeing is that the minister himself will be beyond the scope of merits review. So where's the democratic value or the rule of law emphasis in that?

That's one of the things coming back to my own personal experience of these war-torn areas with these great civil disruptions. You can introduce elections and you can produce legislation, but what I learned in particular was that democracy was about a culture of democracy, the values grown over many, many decades and through many, many ways; it is deep and extensive in how a society operates. What we are seeing from this government is a complete lack of understanding of that issue and in that approach. This legislation will not do what they believe or claim it will do. It will only place more barriers in the way of building a cohesive society, where we have people enlisted in our vision and prepared to fight, die, defend, work for and imbibe the cultural values of our community. And that involves us working at all levels to embrace them, to respect their cultures, to value the fact they have other language skills. We are one of the worst countries in the world for depth of language skills. We should be embracing these people's skills and helping them to help others in this community to learn those skills. We should be out there asking them, 'What's the term for X, Y or Z', building our own appreciation. That's how we also build trade, how we build goodwill internationally, how we build our diplomatic capabilities: through those multicultural bases and communities.

I had many conversations when I was out advocating for Australia to get a seat on the Security Council, and conducted multiple activities in Africa and at the UN with my friend Jose Ramos-Horta. In reaching out to those communities and those countries, quite often the discussions revolved around the communities we had here in Australia that were making such a difference and who were so welcome to us. Those arguments and that understanding of Australia as a multicultural country, an embracing country, made a big difference in that an endeavour. One of the more embarrassing moments I had in my life was during the Tampa affair. I was in the UN headquarters in Dili, working with Norwegian and UNHCR officers. This was the beginning of a period where they started to question Australia's bona fides in that respect. It's been the coalition that has been undermining that, undermining the standing that we have in the world in that respect. This will be taken as yet another step in the wrong direction in that tendency and that trend by this coalition.

I would urge the government to rethink that. I know there are good people on that side who have argued against this, who have constituencies like the member for Reid's and who will understand that it's not going down well. It fits in the same category as that 18C assault. They need to forget this, move on and work with us to build a better Australia.

See this speech in context