Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

It's stirring stuff, I must say. It stirs the blood. It is a bit of patriotism from the shadow minister for immigration and for citizenship, who comes into this House to stir us all up on the government's latest proposals on citizenship. I want to note that today is the national accounts day. It's the day when we see the most data come out on the state of the nation's economy. In question time we didn't have one question on the state of the national accounts or the economy, because they are in good shape under this government. We didn't have one economic question.

On the day when the national accounts showed good economic news, the opposition decided that it would be a good day to seek refuge from the economy—because they have no good news on the economy—in immigration and border protection. Well, we welcome a debate in the immigration portfolio. The same people who are today railing against this government's citizenship proposals railed against our border protection policies for 10 years, as well. They railed against us at every turn. First, it was temporary protection visas. They were the greatest evil on the planet. Then the offshore processing centres that the Howard government ran were cruel and unusual. It is this opposition that, on immigration and border protection, cannot be trusted.

We will not take a lecture on how to administer the immigration portfolio from a former minister who was in office for 79 days. He was one of the conga line of immigration ministers under the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years that saw 50,000 people arrive on 800 boats and over 1,000 people drown at sea. The reality of these proposals is that the government is firmly committed to these citizenship arrangements. In listening to the shadow immigration and citizenship spokesperson, you would think there was something wrong with our proposals. He put this whole contention to this House, and he has put this whole contention in public: 'Oh, that sounds reasonable, but it's not very reasonable at all.'

I want to go through this just so that every single member of the House has their eyes completely wide open about the reality of these proposals. Four years is entirely comparable and reasonable for a person to be here before they get citizenship. The reality is you can do it in one year now—it's not four years. Keeping in mind that we only have a one-year requirement, let's look at comparable countries: the United Kingdom, five years of permanent residence; Canada, four out of six years of permanent residence; France, five years of continuous permanent residence; Germany, eight years of habitual legal residence. So the contention put by the shadow minister that we're doing something out of step with comparable countries is absolutely unacceptable. He mentions members on the government benches. They're happy to take this proposal to their electorates. If you look at these comparable countries, you will see that some of them are paradigms of the Labor Party's virtue signalling—the Netherlands has five years continuous permanent residence, if you didn't already know. In the United States it's five years permanent residence. Denmark—another country those opposite may feel proud of—has nine years continuous residence. New Zealand has five years permanent residence. And, of course, Australia has only one year as a permanent resident and three years of continuous residence.

So this is an entirely reasonable proposal in line with the expectations of the Australian community—that we take more time to get to know someone before we accept them as a citizen. Given that we are a migrant nation, it is entirely reasonable that we do take time to get to know people properly. We assess the values that make someone an Australian. Do they contribute? Do they work for our society? Are they willing to integrate into our community? These are important questions in 2017. They go to the heart of security matters. The shadow minister is wrong to say that this has nothing to do with national security. All of these countries—comparable countries, reasonable countries—around the world have a higher standard on this citizenship requirement precisely because they want to be thorough in understanding who people are before they become citizens of their country. It's reasonable for this government to propose it. I believe it's in step with the community's expectations about the standards that the government should set on citizenship.

Let all of you go to your electorates and say you oppose these measures. I welcome it. You go and tell them that you support Australia being at the bottom of the pack in terms of citizenship and the length of time required for people to become citizens. Let's see how that goes. Then let's get to the next furphy that the Labor Party has been promoting up hill and down dale. The government remains absolutely 100 per cent committed to the measures in this bill.

I will put forward some of the things that that shadow minister has been saying. I'll start by referring to a bit of past history. You would think that a person who had said the following things would be strongly in favour of increased English language requirements. Why has the government put forward stronger English language requirements? It has done so because the Productivity Commission says that the better your level of English the better your chances and prospects—your economic chances and your societal prospects. That's why the government funds 500 hours for the humanitarian program of English lessons—to ensure that people get English language skills so they can do better in their community. Let's just have a little look at who said this: 'We need stricter English language requirements.'

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