Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too seek to speak on the Australian Citizenship Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Requirements for Australian Citizenship and Other Measures) Bill 2017. To some extent this discussion is about our future. This is about what we say a future Australia should look like. I'll come to the issue about values and tests a little later.

I draw your attention to the amount of young students in our galleries today and welcome them here to Parliament House. The fact is that those young people sitting up there are our futures, so, when we speak in this House and talk about change, we are simply using this period of time to make change for, hopefully, the betterment of this country which those young people will eventually take over and run while, hopefully, looking after us.

I return to the bill. When this matter was introduced into the House, the minister said it was about having strong public confidence and support for our migration and citizenship programs. As everybody in this place knows, when this was introduced into the parliament, in the second reading speech the minister spoke about issues associated with national security. It seemed to me at that stage that he was attempting to build this tenuous link between national security, immigration and the wider argument of accepting refugees in this country. I know many speakers opposite have tried to make a point about our migration programs and the number of refugees we take, as if they are reading off a script.

As you are aware, Mr Deputy Speaker, I happen to represent the most multicultural electorate in the whole of Australia. In addition to that, my region has been selected to receive the majority of the refugees coming out in the government's recent humanitarian intake out of Syria. Issues about migration, immigration to this country, and issues about refugees impact considerably on my electorate. Two real issues have impacted over the last couple of years. The issues of the government's approach to section 18C in the Racial Discrimination Act and wanting to talk about free speech and the ability to allow hate speech certainly impacted in my community. But similarly, in relation to this matter, I have seen an outpouring in my community about the issue of citizenship.

Bear in mind that almost a third of my electorate are Vietnamese. The Vietnamese didn't come to Australia before the fall of Saigon in 1975. Malcolm Fraser is actually revered in my community because he was the Prime Minister that allowed the Vietnamese in. He is revered. All those who came in 1975 are very, very good citizens in my community. They are very hardworking and very dedicated. They passionately believe in freedom, democracy and the respect for human rights. Their kids have gone on to do wonderful things in our community. They are doctors, lawyers and accountants. They are well represented throughout our professions.

They see this piece of legislation as a slight on them. I happened to be at a forum convened by the Vietnamese Community in Australia—VCA's New South Wales Chapter, headed by Dr Thang Ha—to discuss this very thing: citizenship. They certainly took exception to a range of issues in this. The two broad issues that they spoke about were the English tests and the issue of the period of time before you would be eligible to make an application for citizenship.

I will start with the English test. Bear in mind that these were mainly the sons and daughters of migrants who came here post 1975, and the vast majority are doctors of medicine, PhDs or graduates in their own right. They have very much passed our tertiary education system. They asked: 'What happens when we sponsor a grandparent? What happens when we sponsor a sibling who hasn't had English as a natural language?' I know that, when I try to give at least a paragraph or two in their language when I speak to a Vietnamese community, it probably leaves them rolling in the aisles. I've got a monotone voice—I understand that—but they've got a tonal language. I didn't appreciate, from their perspective, how hard it is for them to acquire English. To acquire it to university entrance level might have been okay for these young ones who have grown up in our system, but, as they said, 'We can have conversational English with our grandparents, but they could not pass that test.' As a matter of fact, many of their parents couldn't pass that test. Many of those parents who are currently practising doctors would not pass at that level. These are things that have really impacted on a community such as mine.

It wasn't just the Vietnamese who brought this forward. I recently met with a group of Turkish migrants to this country. Bear in mind that, only 50 years ago this year, Australia signed an agreement with Turkey for guest workers to come to Australia to help develop this country. There was a big celebration in the New South Wales Parliament House, which I had the honour of addressing. The Turkish community made their view very clear to me about this notion that you have to be here for another four years. During the course of this debate plenty of us have commented that we're talking about moving from a one-year requirement to four years. I would have thought four years is not bad, by the way. I can accept that four years is probably a good period of time in which to acquire that knowledge and feel settled in our country. They come to this country and learn a little about our community—and we'll probably learn a little about them in the process. Despite what this act says—currently, there is a one-year period before you can make an application—people come here on a temporary visa. They are here either working or studying. By the time they make an application, if you go through the statistics, most have already been living in Australia on a permanent basis for more than four years. They have acquired a sense of what Australia is like. They have acquired a sense of our values and what it's like to be part of the Australian community. They front up and make a choice to declare their allegiance to Australia. They want to declare their allegiance to this country. And what do we do under this proposal? We say, 'That's all very good, but you've got to wait another four years.' We would be talking about people who are committed to this country being here for a decade before they are given the opportunity to swear allegiance to Australia. I would've thought encouraging people to swear allegiance to the country is a good thing, something to be encouraged, something quite powerful—because these people are stating their commitment to Australia and Australia's future.

The young people up in the gallery are our future. They probably think this is all just rhetoric, because in their schools they probably wouldn't make a distinction. I didn't make a distinction when I grew up. I grew up in a working class suburb, with lots of migrants. I didn't know which kids came from a migrant background. They probably had better sandwiches for lunch than I did! I didn't know which kids came from a Housing Commission background or anything else. Young people are far more accepting when it comes to people's futures than we are in trying to codify it—as we are trying to do now—in terms of this piece of legislation.

The most abhorrent thing in this debate so far is to be able to couch all this in terms of national security. This is somehow going to make life more secure for Australians by, firstly, encouraging people to have university-entry English and, secondly, requiring them to be here for almost a decade before they can apply for Australian citizenship. I would have thought the best thing for us in this country is to have people swearing allegiance to our country and being prepared to abide by our rules and values, not simply shunting them aside and saying, 'We may or may not accept you in a decade's time.' I would have thought that is contrary to our views on national security.

I take umbrage at the fact that we somehow want to play this racist card once again, as was done with respect to 18C. We want to pin to this debate some notional aspect of national security. The fact is that, in this country, unless you are an Aboriginal person, we are all immigrants or descendants from immigrants. It doesn't matter when you came here or how you came here, we all have that as part of our heritage. That has been probably the most successful aspect of Australia. The Prime Minister has on many occasions talked of this country being the most successful multicultural country in the world. I think he is right. But I don't think we need to couch that in a way that wins the votes of those who might want to listen to the redneck radio talkback hosts who vilify those in our community who come from backgrounds other than Anglo-Celtic, ostracize those who come from other countries and cast aspersions about their practices.

We have, already, a sense of what it is to be Australian. As I said, unless you're an Aboriginal person, we have all brought with us our cultures, our heritage and our past. That's been interwoven into what it means to be Australian. Being Australian is being part of a big heterogeneous country which has been able not only to attract to itself the hopes, dreams and aspirations of all those people who come here but mould them into where they want to go in the future. That is our future.

I'm concerned that we are having this debate on the basis that we think that having people stay for another four years beyond the four or five years they have already been here is a good thing. I think having people assess what it is to be Australian, assess what our values and commitment to our land are all about and swear allegiance to our country is paramount, a good thing. I am not sure what sort of message raising the bar on English language to the point of university entrance level—which, by the way, would probably knock out many in the Australian community from being able to pass that test—sends to people: 'Unless you're academically up to that level of university entrance English, we don't want you.' There might be a couple on the other side of the aisle who might be worrying about their futures!

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