Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to join with my Labor parliamentary colleagues and oppose the changes in the Australian Citizenship Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Requirements for Australian Citizenship and Other Measures) Bill 2017. I do so because the government's proposed changes quite simply, as far as I'm concerned, are unwarranted, and I don't believe that there is any evidence-based reason for changes to the Citizenship Act. These changes, on the contrary, stand to undo all the great work we as a country have done to date to create the sort of social cohesion that has resulted in a successful, contemporary, multicultural Australian society. These changes are nothing short of divisive. As they appear to have been solely designed to deliberately exclude people, not to include them, it's a bill about exclusion, not inclusion. These changes present a calculated and harsh hurdle to Australian citizenship, one that has never been attempted by any other government. It's a 'little Australia' bill that bucks the visionary aspiration of Australia's nation-building project.

I have the opportunity to attend many citizenship ceremonies in my electorate of Calwell. Having an electorate that has the highest intake of refugees historically, and more recently the highest intake from Syria and Iraq, and a very large multicultural community made up of established migrants and second and third-generation migrants, means that I have had the opportunity of seeing thousands of locals, migrants and refugees take up with great pride their Australian citizenship. Australian citizenship ceremonies in my electorate are incredibly important family and community occasions, and they're always filled with excitement, with joy and with pride. I personally really enjoy attending citizenship ceremonies. Each time they bring back precious memories for me personally, as they remind me of my own experience when I became an Australian citizen alongside my parents.

At our local citizenship ceremonies, I see so many of my constituents embarking on what they see as a new chapter in their life here in Australia. I see their pride and the sense of achievement from the moment I shake their hand and offer them the Australian flag, which they so proudly hold, embrace and wave while they pledge allegiance to their new home and when they sing our national anthem for the first time. Each new citizen thanks me, their federal member, for the honour that we as Australia have bestowed on them by allowing them to become citizens and welcoming them as equals to our multicultural family. They are indeed grateful. They are excited. And many of them, who have come from war-torn countries, see this moment of citizenship as an anchor to a place of safety, stability and egalitarianism. Each and every time our newly minted Australian citizens look forward to participating in our democratic process. In fact, I am astounded at how quick they are to fill out their AEC form so they can get on the roll. And nothing is more moving than the children who stand next to the parents, in whom I see, reflected in their presence, the future of this country.

Throughout this debate, I've thought about my own family, the people I grew up with and indeed my constituents more broadly. I think about how demeaning it would be to be excluded from attaining citizenship because you can't get to level IELTS 6 of the standard English test or how frustrating it would be to have to be told that you have to wait for a longer period of time now because the government has arbitrarily decided that you need more years to prove yourself. I think about the people who will never overcome this insurmountable hurdle proposed by this legislation. I genuinely do wonder: what is this all about? The preamble to the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 states:

… citizenship is a common bond … uniting all Australians …

Citizenship is not only a legal contract; it's also of enormous symbolic significance that all of us are united and equal as Australians. Citizenship should not be reserved exclusively for those who happen to speak university-level English, while those of us who don't are to be relegated to some purgatory of Australian citizenship.

I want to refer to the Federation of Ethnic Communities' Councils of Australia's submission to the Senate inquiry into the citizenship changes, where they state that this bill 'will dramatically change the rules determining qualification for Australian citizenship'. From my own personal experience, and also from the feedback I've received from the people in my electorate, this bill, which purports to expedite integration because of the level of English it imposes and to somehow protect our Australian values and cultures and even our national security, will actually be doing the opposite. It will compromise the multicultural society that millions of migrants have worked so hard to build over the decades.

This is not a spurious view held by me or my Labor colleagues. It is the view of people who have skin in the game on the issue of integration, the migrant communities across this country and in my own electorate, from the English to the Dutch, the Italians, the Greeks, the Turks, the Yugoslavs—in fact, all of Arthur Calwell's new Australians, who have come from generations of migrants whose biggest contribution to this nation as citizens was to build this country. They did it without university-level English. There were thousands of young postwar migrants, many of whom worked on the iconic Snowy Mountains Scheme, my father-in-law included. In fact, many of them built their lives and their fortunes with very little English at all.

As a matter of fact, under this bill—I've thought about this—my parents would never have become Australian citizens. Never. They had little education in Greece. They came to Australia as adults with a young family. They worked very hard day and night and did not have the capacity to learn English. However, they built a life for their family, they bought property and they educated both of their daughters to university level. In fact, one of those daughters ended up being in this place as a federal member of parliament. But God only knows where all that lifelong contribution would have gone had they been denied Australian citizenship. Maybe they would have been forced to 'go back to where they came from', as a former member of this House infamously once said.

Australia has managed to get along with the process of nation-building and integration and has done it with many of us speaking variations of English, whether it is mother tongue English, university-level English, basic English or conversational English. In fact, the Greek-Australians have even developed their own idiom here in Australia. We call it Greeklish. It's actually quite funny but reflective of the reality of living in Australia.

My point is that Australians have gotten along quite fine, thank you very much, and have been able to communicate and collaborate with each other with whatever English level they have able to them. You know what? Their commitment to Australia has been all the better for it.

I believe we are the most successful multicultural society in the world. Even our Prime Minister used to say that once upon a time. But we didn't become this by accident or by punitive measures. The truth is that access to Australian citizenship has been fundamental to developing an inclusive and cohesive society, yet our own Prime Minister seems to have had a change of mind on this issue. Perhaps he has been convinced otherwise by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection. In fact, the Prime Minister is now saying that this bill 'will ensure that many people who had not learnt English or had not been encouraged to learn English will do so.' You know what we are doing, he says? We're doing them a big favour. Leaving aside the somewhat patronising undertone, this is a very narrow and short-sighted prerequisite for citizenship.

I want to make on thing clear: in opposing this bill I am not for a minute suggesting people who want to become citizens of Australia or who want to live here and become integrated in our community should not learn English. I'm not saying that at all. In fact, I do believe that being able to speak the English language is important to getting around, belonging and integrating. I really do. Our settlement services do a great job of providing English language classes to new migrants who want to become citizens. Historically, we have provided English language classes and helped people learn the English language since the days of Australia's first immigration minister, Arthur Calwell.

The issue here is not learning the English language. The issue here is the standard of English, the IELTS level 6 university English that is being used to decide whether or not you can become an Australian citizen. That's the issue. The government appears to want to raise the bar so high that, in doing so, it will make citizenship tests insurmountable for many hardworking people, including many in my electorate.

The Refugee Council of Australia has said of this bill:

The current Bill would disproportionately affect refugees, and it would fundamentally alter the nature of Australian citizenship. The proposals in the Bill would effectively convert citizenship policy from being a tool of inclusion to a tool of exclusion.

For those people in my electorate who have already been waiting for citizenship to come through, these changes also propose another hurdle. The government now wants them to wait another three years or so to get citizenship, causing further uncertainty and angst.

The government, of course, will argue that new migrants and refugees need to work harder to integrate. They need to wait longer and learn not only to speak English but to speak university-level English before they are allowed to become citizens. Yet to the people of my electorate, especially the ones born overseas, becoming an Australian citizen was instrumental and fundamental to their sense of belonging.

The people in my electorate are proof that you don't need university-level English to become a good Australian. The people of Calwell and their children are proof we should not use Australian citizenship as a tool to exclude people, nor to reaffirm our values. Our values are reaffirmed in the daily lives of my constituents. I believe FECCA is right when it is suggested this bill will permanent underclass of Australian residents who will be denied the rights and opportunities of being welcomed and included as Australian citizens. These changes, if they pass this House and are enacted, are set to exclude a whole cohort of people because of a language test that even many Australian-born citizens would find difficult to successfully complete. This is a view shared by the Australian Human Rights Commission, who said, 'Many Australia-born citizens would not possess a written or spoken command of English equivalent to this standard.'

I want to thank all the civil society organisations such as FECCA, the many people in my electorate and others who are standing up and defending our rights because, quite frankly, I do not think the government is. I don't think this is just a case of snobbery. I don't even think it is a case of elitism, although it has been referred as such. I think this is blatant racism. It may sound harsh, but as far as I am concerned this is blatant racism by a government that stands to do one thing, and that is to divide the Australian community.

I will finish with where I started. It leaves me to continue to ask the question that a lot of people in the Australian community are asking: what really is the point of these proposed changes? What is the point of this legislation? It does not add to our social cohesion; in fact, it is the antithesis of this. These changes will compromise our multicultural society. These changes take away the egalitarian nature of the Aussie way of life and thinking. These changes are detrimental and dangerous to a safe and cohesive Australian society. This is not the way a progressive, forward-thinking country behaves in a global community.

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