Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Coulton, when I left off speaking earlier today on the Australian Citizenship Legislation Amendment (Strengthening the Requirements for Australian Citizenship and Other Measures) Bill 2017, I had just reached the part of the bill which deals with the concept of a pledge of allegiance, and you will remember that I said, at the beginning of my remarks on this bill, that we already have that incorporated into the process of citizenship. But I know my time is short and so I just want to make two final remarks.

The first is this. The government says that this bill is about national security. Yet this bill deals with people that are already in Australia. They are permanent residents. They are already here. If the government is serious in saying that there is a national security issue to be dealt with in this bill, it is on their head that they have caused that problem already by letting those people into the country as permanent residents. If there is a problem, they need to deal with it straight away, right now, under their existing powers. It does not get dealt with under this bill. If there is a problem, it's already sitting there.

Finally, I want to say this. This morning I attended the ACU interfaith breakfast with the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and many other members of this House and members and representatives of many faiths across this country. The Prime Minister said this, echoing remarks he has made in this place and many other places before:

We are the most successful multicultural society in the world. That there is no doubt.

…   …   …

And our immigration nation has come from every corner of the world and obviously from every faith. Now all of that diversity enriches us. …

Everybody's culture enriches everybody else's.

If it is the case—which I do not disagree with at all—that we are a successful multicultural nation, as I believe we are and as the Prime Minister says we are, and that has occurred under our citizenship laws and processes as they are now, that do not set an unrealistic barrier, that do not make people wait forever, that do not create a second class of residents that have no pathway to citizenship, then there is clearly nothing wrong and there is no need to make a change as this legislation proposes. We don't need this bill.

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