Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

We have from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education, Science and Training at the table, ‘Why is it the right balance?’ I was not at that national security briefing—it was the premiers and the Prime Minister—but the person moving this amendment was not there either. On being provided with the best intelligence available, they said that was the right balance. There are times on national security issues when the people who have been given the expert briefings make a call and you look at it and, to the best extent that you are able to exercise your judgement, you go with the call that has been made in the face of the best intelligence. But the intelligence that has moved this amendment has had nothing to do with ASIO briefings, as far as I know, because I am sure that if it was to do with ASIO briefings they would have bothered to revisit the meeting with the premiers and the Prime Minister. I fail to believe—maybe I just have not worked out how this government operate—that even this government would reserve their most informed, high-security intelligence briefings for the parliamentary secretary who has responsibility for citizenship. I find it hard to believe that he would get the information but the premiers and the Prime Minister would not. I find that difficult to believe. If that is how it now operates, then that is a fascinating development in governance in this nation.

When Labor agreed for this bill to be passed off to the Main Committee, we did so in the context that it was noncontroversial, that we were in agreement with the government on these issues and that there were some minor amendments that we would be putting forward. We have a situation now where we will honour the agreement that we previously gave about it going to the Main Committee, but this agreement never would have been given had we known at the time that the government intended to abandon the information that had previously been agreed on nationally—and that is what we are faced with here.

There is much in this bill that is good, and that is why, even though I suspect we will lose in the vote as to whether or not it goes to four years, we will support the bill in its final form. One of the things is that we have a changing concept of how the residency requirements are viewed—and this was something that was discussed in estimates yesterday. Previously, determining length of stay in Australia for eligibility for citizenship would begin at the time you became a permanent resident. Given the number of people who find themselves on temporary visas but well and truly integrated into Australia, the government is now offering a higher level of flexibility in taking those periods into account. On the face of it, that appears to be a sensible move.

We also have some major changes which particularly affect the Maltese community. They are not specific and exclusive to the Maltese community, but there are statelessness issues that I know both the member for Gorton and the member for Prospect will be going into in some detail, where people of Maltese origin who renounced their Australian citizenship—where they were forced to under some previous situations that affect quite specifically this situation—were deemed to have retained their rights to Maltese citizenship rather than having acquired a foreign citizenship. In March 2005, the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee stated that Australian citizenship needed to be more inclusive and that children of people who renounce their citizenship under section 18 should also find themselves eligible for Australian citizenship. The government is going some way to fixing many of these problems. An amendment in detail has been circulated, I understand, which addresses the problem for some of the people caught by the situation affecting the Maltese community. Labor will be moving an amendment which I hope will be acceptable to the government. Labor will also move a second reading amendment, which I will do at the end of my remarks. The Maltese group are by far the largest to be affected by the section 18 rule, but there will also be some from other countries—for example, people from the United States have also found themselves to be affected.

A discussion paper has been put out by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs on a number of issues relating to citizenship. The discussion paper itself does not refer specifically to the four-year change. The four-year change is something that was heralded at the same time as the discussion paper went out, and I have no doubt that the shift to four years is being covered in many of the submissions that are being made following that discussion paper. Sadly, any of that level of consultation proves irrelevant, because the government were able to wait more than a year to implement COAG recommendations but they were not able to wait until the end of their own consultation period to determine whether or not to ignore the security advice and security determinations and go for the shift all the way to four years.

In the context of some of the issues in that discussion paper, a lot has been said about the English language and the importance of people learning it. I would find the government’s conviction on this far more credible if the Howard government had not slashed funds from its migrant English language program, which was revealed in estimates to be to the tune of $10.8 million. When you look at adult English services, which is a significant area for adult migrant English programs, you will find cuts to English language training at the same time as there are massive increases in the number of people seeking and requiring those programs, which makes the government’s commitment to English language seem far more tokenistic than I think people on each side of politics would wish.

From what is currently circulated, it appears that an earlier draft is no longer there. If it is no longer there, I am pleased. I saw an earlier draft of the second set of amendments, the transitional amendments concerning stateless people, but it does not appear to be the version that is now in the House. Given that the government has changed this legislation a number of times, I will refer to the draft now just in case it re-emerges after my speech. The government were intending to have a category of stateless people. The minister would not even have a discretion to allow an applicant to become an Australian citizen, depending on whether or not the applicant had been imprisoned for a period of time under the law of a foreign country. When I saw that amendment I thought it was one of the more extraordinary suggestions I had ever seen from the government. That is not a bad benchmark; there have been a few out there.

But to actually see the government, in amendments that appear to have been withdrawn, put forward that the law of another country and whether or not somebody had been imprisoned by another country would provide a bar on them ever receiving Australian citizenship is, I have to say, deeply offensive. If there is anything that the laws of other countries should not go near and not have any bar on it is Australian citizenship. If we do not own this one, what is the point? The government believes in outsourcing a whole lot of areas, but I do not reckon that we ought to outsource Australian citizenship to some of the worst regimes in the world. Yet we were to have a situation where somebody could have been imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, could come here and apply for Australian citizenship and, depending on the sentence Saddam Hussein had given them, find they were to be barred from Australian citizenship. As I say, that was in an earlier draft. I have asked the clerks for the latest draft circulated in the chamber, and I have been unable to find those sections. I have to say that I really hope those amendments are gone.

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