Barnaby Joyce (New England, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this bill be now read a second time.

I was booted out of this place under a section 44 case because apparently I had dual citizenship for a country that I visited for approximately five days. My father, who was not a citizen of that country—my mother was not a citizen of that country. It just so happened that, for a period of time, I was entitled to citizenship; therefore, I was no longer able to be a member of this parliament. I want to thank people, because it allowed me to have a world record three times as Deputy Prime Minister of Australia.

However, if I'm not allowed to sit in this parliament, because of dual citizenship, why should I be allowed to stay in Australia if I commit a terrorist offence? If your affection for another country is so much that you want to keep the citizenship of that country and you, whilst here in Australia, decide that what you will do as a terrorist offence is murder people and kill people—as we have seen, unfortunately—then you should live your virtue and go back to the other country, wherever that may be. What is the reason that you should be staying in Australia? Why should you stay here? You obviously don't like the place. In fact, you hate Australia. So, if you hate Australia, leave Australia. It's really quite simple. You can't have a potpourri of allegiances that, on a time of testing, show that they are weighted towards another nation and away from the nation that we all live in.

It has got to be seen that having Australian citizenship comes with rights. It comes with obligations, and those obligations are negated if you act in such a way to the complete detriment and harm of the Australian people and also of the culture, the egalitarian nature, of Australia. What this says—I thought was the bleeding obvious—is that, if you come from a part of the world which has sowed a seed that says that you find the culture of Australia anathema and you hold that so strongly that you pursue a terrorist act, then surely that strength of affinity and of love of that alternate nation, that alternate culture, should see you deported to it. Then, you should be living to your heart's content in another part of the world—becoming their problem, not ours. I mean, when you think about it, if you keep Australian citizenship and we ultimately become responsible—because we don't have the death penalty in Australia—for jailing you, the cost of that is more than if you stay in a first-class hotel in Sydney. It is a massive cost to the Australian taxpayer.

So this bill is about stating the bleeding obvious. It's about saying that, if you hold dual citizenship, and you would obviously be aware of that dual citizenship, and that dual citizenship is a reflection of an affection for another nation and your affection for Australia is in such a form that you have gone out to commit a terrorist act quite obviously with the intention of killing Australians and of killing the people who are of the culture, are of the ethos, have given you comfort, have given you succour, have given you security, have given you the opportunities of free health and free education, have given you the egalitarian nature, have given you freedom before the law, have given you equality before the law, have given you opportunity and have given you basically a classless society—if that is so at odds with where you are and if that offends you so much that you wish to go and commit a terrorist attack to kill your fellow Australians, then why on earth aren't we kicking you out of this country?

If you have that alternate nation where your love resides, then that is where you should be booted out to. That is where you go. So I can't quite understand why. I accept that other people might say, 'Yes, that's fair enough,' and we might get something in a similar form that's supported by other parties. I want to acknowledge the member for Flynn from the National Party for his support on this. It is something that's seen as being on a bipartisan basis, because it's logic. It's not something that I parochially want to hold to as my own, and the only party I've mentioned here right now is the National Party. So, if this is something that can be supported in such a form to bring logic back into this, I think it will be overwhelmingly supported by the Australian people.

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