Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I originally started my speech in the last sitting week and I will continue from where I was up to when the debate was interrupted. What I would like to continue with today is making it very clear that the issues that the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Harming Australians) Bill 2015 deals with are very different and very clear cut. I believe there is a very real and widespread consensus in the community that direct, personal involvement in terrorist activities is a very obvious abrogation of one's responsibilities as a citizen.

Citizenship is something we offer to permanent residents as a means of pledging their allegiance to our nation. For those born here, it is a right which also confers a certain range of responsibilities. As the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection said in introducing this legislation:

This bill emphasises the central importance of allegiance to Australia in the concept of citizenship.

Australian citizenship is something to be treasured. It is a common bond which unites us all, whether we were born here or chose to make Australia our home. Australian citizenship involves a commitment to this country, its people and its democratic rights and privileges. Australian citizenship should not be taken lightly.

Unlike many other nations, citizenship is encouraged and available for all permanent residents who meet the criteria. In 2013-14, a total of 163,017 people became Australian citizens by conferral. These new Australians came from at least 190 different countries, which clearly reflects our longstanding and very strong immigration program. Australia has a long, proud tradition of welcoming both migrants and refugees. The Australian public support a generous, orderly, humanitarian resettlement of refugees in greatest need around the world. There is greater confidence in this program now that this government has gained control of our borders and stopped illegal boat arrivals.

I want to focus for a moment on our record because there has been a lot of misrepresentation and an incredible amount of falsehood generated in the media about Australia's immigration program. It is central to the question of citizenship, of allegiance to our nation and, indeed, of the spirit in which we build a thriving, cohesive society. Let's be clear: last year, Australia resettled 13½ thousand people under refugee and humanitarian programs. On a per capita basis, we are the most generous refugee resettlement nation in the world. There are many nations across the world who offer no resettlement program for refugees—absolutely none. Australia is one of the fewer than 30 countries to offer resettlement through the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Australia is actively engaged with the UNHCR on the broader humanitarian crisis occurring in many parts of the world. I absolutely refute the notion, very often put forward, that we are not pulling our weight.

I also refute the narrative, in some sections of the media, that our border protection policies are, in any way, hard-hearted. In fact, because of the success of our policy in restoring the integrity of our borders, the coalition government are increasing our offshore humanitarian program by almost 40 per cent. By 2018-19, places in resettlement programs will increase to 18,750. Of course, our government also committed earlier this year to taking in 12,000 extra refugees who have been displaced by the conflict in Syria and Iraq, and by the true humanitarian crisis created by the rise of ISIL militants in those areas. This is the largest intake of refugees since World War II. It is clearly an important part of our global responsibilities and our humanitarian approach. I certainly want to stress that word 'humanitarian'. The clearest evidence that our policies are, indeed, humanitarian in nature is the fact that we have stopped the deaths at sea. We have ended the policies that resulted in over 1,200 deaths at sea. It is important to remember that busting the people smugglers' model has saved lives. It has allowed us to resettle people who have been waiting in refugee camps. It is, by any measure, humanitarian. We remain, as we have always been, a welcoming nation that offers and encourages citizenship for permanent residents.

However, with this bill, we recognise that Australian citizenship is a common bond involving reciprocal rights and obligations and that citizens may, through their conduct, demonstrate that they have severed that bond and repudiated their allegiance to Australia. The Citizenship Act currently already provides for loss of a dual national's Australian citizenship in very limited circumstances. This bill represents an expansion of the circumstances in which Australian citizenship can be lost. It is part of a multifaceted approach to countering the threats to national security and a rapidly changing world where threats are posed on a range of fronts, including at home. As we have said, the aim of this bill is to protect the Australian community, but it is also about putting stock in the concept of allegiance and underscoring the responsibilities that come with citizenship. These are important discussions that we ought to be having in the Australian community.

I believe sometimes that our brand of relaxed patriotism might be misinterpreted as some form of weakness by those who have contempt for our values and ideals. It most certainly is not. This bill underscores the fact that we have very strong expectations of our citizens when it comes to allegiance to our nation. Any involvement in terrorist activities is clearly against the national interest and in breach of the very basic responsibilities of citizenship.

On behalf of my constituents, I am very pleased to support this legislation and to commend this bill to the House.

Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I was interrupted, I said that I thought it was important that we go over some of the process of how the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 arrived in this House. On 26 May this year, an article in TheSydney Morning Herald reported 'Cabinet revolt over Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton plan to strip Australians of citizenship'.

According to Peter Hartcher and James Massola's piece:

Six members of the Abbott cabinet have risen up against an extraordinary proposal to give a minister the power to strip an Australian of their sole citizenship.

The report goes on to say:

According to participants, Senator Brandis, in opposing the plan, told the cabinet meeting: "I am the Attorney-General. It is my job to stand for the rule of law."

Mr Joyce put to the meeting: "Isn't that what we have courts for?"

Mr Andrews is said to have pointed out to the meeting that, if concern about the proposal was so widespread, community concern was likely to be even greater.

Because the idea had divided cabinet's national security committee, it was not presented to Monday night's cabinet meeting as proposed law but as part of a "discussion paper".

The six-page discussion paper was distributed during the meeting, angering some that it had not been circulated in advance, as matters for cabinet are supposed to be. Mr Turnbull asked Mr Abbott in the meeting whether The Daily Telegraph had been briefed on the idea for Tuesday morning's newspaper, according to people present. Briefing the newspaper, a favoured channel for leaking the Prime Minister's moves in advance, would have effectively pre-empted the cabinet, which met from 7pm. Mr Abbott replied that the newspaper had not been briefed. Page five of the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday morning carried a report that said in part:

Prime Minister Tony Abbott will announce today, after cabinet last night approved the policy, that a bill will be introduced before the end of June that would strip dual national terrorist sympathisers of their Australian citizenship.

This bill was then brought to the parliament on 24 June this year and was met with an array of concerns by the opposition and many leading constitutional experts.

The bill was then sent to the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security, which received a number of written submissions and evidence during hearings from constitutional experts. This process raised some very serious concerns about the constitutionality of this bill and explored whether it would be struck down by the High Court. I would like to acknowledge the work of the Chair and Deputy Chair of that committee, the members for Wannon and Holt respectively, and the work of committee member, the member for Isaacs. The committee heard a range of concerns from a number of witnesses. Constitutional expert Professor George Williams noted that the bill before the committee stage was the most 'problematically drafted bill' he had ever seen, with more constitutional problems in it than any he had given evidence on. As reported in the Sydney Morning Herald:

Professor Williams had "no doubt" such a law would be challenged in the High Court and had already been approached by "prominent solicitors" who had clients facing charges that are included in the bill.

"It's such an obvious one to bring a challenge to; I don't see why they wouldn't to escape loss of their citizenship."

The draft bill was also dissected by constitutional law professor Anne Twomey, who noted that the inclusion of minor offences suggests 'chaos' and inexperience in the drafting of the legislation. Professor Twomey told ABC radio:

If you intentionally destroy or damage any commonwealth property, that's it, you've automatically lost your citizenship.

As well as the committee process, the government launched a discussion paper entitled Australian citizenship—your right, your responsibility and held a number of public meetings. This process was led by the Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs, and then Parliamentary Secretary to the Social Services Minister and the Attorney General, Senator Fierravanti-Wells, as well as the member for Berowra, who was appointed the special envoy for citizenship.

From day one this process has been plagued by inconsistency and inadequacy. Most notably, we are still waiting on the outcome of this process, despite the fact that this bill is now being debated. As part of this process, the government released a glossy booklet littered with errors of substance and also basic proofing errors. According to The Conversation website, which is instructive:

The Abbott government’s discussion paper on the rights and responsibilities of citizenship calls for a “national conversation” on the issue. Unfortunately, the paper is akin to a push-polling exercise. It is both tendentious and misleading.

Most of the paper is devoted to framing citizenship in a way that is conducive to the government’s proposal to strip dual nationals involved in terrorist activities of their citizenship. Notwithstanding the title–Australian Citizenship: Your Right, Your Responsibility–the paper repeatedly talks of citizenship as a privilege, not a right.

“Privilege” is intended to convey something that should be valued and cherished. But, in legal terms, a privilege is something the government confers and can take away.

In this second sense, the language of “privilege” pre-empts a central issue for debate. Is Australian citizenship “conditional” on a ministerial assessment that someone “deserves” it? Should it be revocable on ministerial suspicion that a person has committed an offence?

Should there be any doubt about the government’s answer, the paper concludes that the privileges of citizenship:

… are fundamentally linked to an ongoing commitment to Australia and participation in Australian society.

It says:

Citizenship is a contract by which we all abide.

I put it to this House, that this whole exercise was a deception. It was an attempt to give the appearance of consultation when in reality the government had predetermined the outcome. It is a disgraceful way to treat this vitally important aspect of our democracy and identity. The flaws in this process do not stop with this booklet. According to the border.gov.au website, submissions to the discussion paper closed on 30 June 2015. These submissions have never been made public, and according to a range of stakeholders in the settlements and multicultural areas whom I have spoken to, many did not even know the process was underway.

Then on 20 August 2015, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, the then parliamentary secretary and the member for Berowra held a press conference announcing they would be conducting public meetings on the discussion paper—the discussion paper that had already stopped receiving submissions. Again, this process was rushed and lacked direction. The announcement, as I said, was on 20 August and the first meeting was held in Hurstville on 24 August. I am also reliably informed that the meeting in Tasmania was predominantly comprised of departmental staff. On top of all this, the government has still not produced a final report or response to this process. The government has failed to make the submissions public, it has failed to properly consult with the sector and it has not got anything to show for it—and here we are debating a bill that this process should have informed.

It is no surprise that sections of the community are left scratching their heads. As reported by Sarah Martin in The Australian on Monday:

Community advocacy group Muslim Voice said the government should wait until it considered the findings of a national consultation process tasked with gauging community views on potential changes to citizenship laws and the "privileges and responsibilities" of Australian citizenship.

According to Australian Muslim Voice President, Diana Abdel-Rahman:

All of that work has been done: if it is not actually going to be taken seriously, then what was the purpose?

This process has been a complete debacle. It was an attempt to give the impression of consultation when in fact there was no meaningful consultation going on. I call on the government to release these submissions and a response to them. If people went to the trouble to participate, we should at least recognise the value in that.

I now turn to the substance of the bill. From the outset, Labor made it clear that we were willing to support a sensible updating of our citizenship laws, which recognises that those who take up arms against Australia should lose their citizenship. We believe that the legislation introduced by the government—and with the recommended changes set out by the PJCIS—represents a faithful updating of those laws. This means that only persons who have been convicted of a terrorist related offence or who are overseas collaborating with terrorist organisations can have their citizenship revoked. This represents a far narrower and more targeted set of amendments than those which were first considered by the cabinet and the National Security Committee back in May.

We think that this package does represent a sensible updating of our laws that deal with a legitimate national security concern: that, unfortunately, we have Australians who today are fighting in the conflict in Syria and Iraq. When that conflict is over, the relationship between those people and our country will confront us with difficult issues that we will have to face. The parliament has been dealing with this over the last couple of years. The foreign fighters legislation is an example of that, and these amendments, this package, represents another tool we can provide to our national security agencies to allow them to keep us safe.

At the same time, there has been considerable anxiety amongst many Australians that this debate might somehow render dual citizens as lesser Australians. This must never be the case and I say firmly to the Australian people that Labor will never allow this to be so. Dual citizens are just as Australian as anybody else, and it is very important that nothing is put before the parliament that seeks to erode that principle. We believe that this package honours the status of all Australians while dealing with a very complex issue.

A number of constitutional questions have been raised by legal experts during the course of the hearings of the committee. We frankly retain some anxiety in relation to the constitutionality of this legislation, but I note the letter that has been provided to the committee by the Attorney-General assuring the government's confidence in the constitutionality of this bill. In his letter to the committee the Attorney-General states:

I can assure you that the Government has received advice from the Solicitor-General, Mr Justin Gleeson SC, that, in his opinion, there is a good prospect that a majority of the High Court would reject a constitutional challenge to the core aspects of the draft Bill.

It certainly would have been better if the Solicitor-General's advice had been provided to the committee, as requested, but given the national security issues involved in this, Labor will not stand in the way of this legislation on this issue alone. Suffice to say, at the end of the day it is for this government to ensure legislation it puts before the parliament is constitutional. That is an issue for the government.

In summing up, the Labor Party has always agreed with the principle of this legislation. It makes sense to update our laws to reflect the times, as unfortunate as that requirement may be. I will reiterate how troubling the process has been, by the government, to get to this point. It has been characterised by incompetence and, in some cases, cheap politics. I would have thought something so important would have been treated with more contemplation and care.

Ian Goodenough (Moore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 proposes amendments to the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to ensure that individuals holding the citizenship of one or more nations in addition to their Australian citizenship—dual nationals—and who contravene Australian laws by participating in armed activity with terrorist organisations, or engage in terrorism-related actions sanctioned by terrorist groups will stand to lose their Australian citizenship.

Recent tragic events in France have focused international attention and galvanised global resolve to combat terrorism. This represents a crackdown on individuals who fail to comply with the oath or affirmation subscribed to at citizenship ceremonies, which requires citizens to be loyal to Australia and obey the laws of our nation. It prevents hardened criminals trained in insurgent techniques, such as the use of improvised explosive devices, from re-entering our borders with radicalised ideas and deadly skills. These measures are intended to spare the taxpayers of Australia from the significant costs of long-term incarceration in maximum security correctional facilities, and access to welfare. In the main, the persons affected were originally foreign nationals who acquired Australian Citizenship and subsequently betrayed our nation.

The principal international instrument relevant to dual citizenship is the 1930 Hague convention. A first point of principle in this convention is that dual nationality was considered undesirable. Even though the Hague convention was drafted at a time when the ideal was generally perceived as being that every person should have one citizenship only, dual citizenship has long been recognised in international law.

The world environment and attitudes have changed considerably since the Hague convention was signed by Australia, and especially over the last 10 to 15 years. There is vastly greater mobility of people and increased incidence of people living and working in foreign countries for extended periods. Australians, like others, are often required to acquire citizenship overseas for business, social and cultural reasons, obtain employment or to reside with non-Australian citizen spouses. There is greater acceptance in the modern, globalised world, that individuals may be citizens of more than one country and satisfactorily meet their duties as citizens in relation to each country. However there are currently more than 39 countries that prohibit their nationals from holding dual citizenship.

As a child migrant to Australia I was for a time a dual-citizen, as the minimum age for renouncing citizenship in Singapore is 21 years of age. After attaining the age of majority, I formally renounced my Singaporean citizenship, through the Singapore High Commission here in Canberra, more than 10 years ago when arranging my passport at the time of making my first overseas trip as an Australian citizen. I knew that my first allegiance was and still remains to Australia. Little did I know at the time that renunciation paved the way for me to be elected to this House, satisfying section 44 of the Australian Constitution.

Under the provisions of this bill, dual nationals who are convicted of specific terrorism-related offences will potentially face the loss of their Australian citizenship. These offences are detailed in section 33AA of the act, which provides that a person who is a dual national or citizen of a country other than Australia renounces their Australian citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in specified conduct including: engaging in international terrorist activities; using arms, explosive or lethal devices; engaging in a terrorist act; providing or receiving training in connection with the preparation for, engagement in, or assistance in a terrorist act; directing the activities of a terrorist organisation; recruiting for a terrorist organisation; financing terrorism or a terrorist; or engaging in foreign incursions and recruitment. The provisions will apply to individuals who have engaged in relevant conduct offshore, or who have engaged in relevant conduct onshore and left Australia before being charged and brought to trial in respect of that conduct.

Furthermore, the provisions apply to conduct engaged in: with the specific intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause; with the intention of supporting, promoting or engaging in a hostile activity in another country; or on the instructions of a declared terrorist organisation. A proposed new section 35A provides a power for the minister to revoke a person's citizenship once they have been convicted of a relevant offence and upon consideration of other relevant criteria. Loss of citizenship is not automatic upon conviction.

At a time when our national security and law enforcement agencies are involved in more than 400 high-priority counter-terrorism investigations and surveillance of multiple suspects, the need to protect our national security is of paramount importance. Since September 2014 there have been three terrorist attacks inspired by Islamic State within Australia. Six planned attacks against innocent civilians within Australia have been disrupted. This alarming trend is rising. Within a recent nine-month period alone the same number of Australian citizens have been arrested in counter-terrorism operations as were arrested in the 14 years since 2001.

At the beginning of this year the government published a list of 20 terrorist organisations outlawed in Australia under the Criminal Code Act 1995. The listing of an organisation under the Criminal Code makes it an offence to direct the activities of, be a member of, recruit for, train for and receive training from that organisation. It is also a criminal offence to get funds to, from or for or provide support to and associate with members of that organisation.

Under section 102.1A of the Criminal Code, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security may review listings of terrorist organisations. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security is currently conducting inquiries to review the relisting of five terrorist organisations under the Criminal Code, including: al-Shabaab; the Kurdistan Workers' Party; Palestinian Islamic Jihad; and the Hamas sponsored lzz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

It is estimated that there are up to 250 Australian citizens who have departed from Australia as foreign fighters for terrorist organisations and that between 40 per cent and 50 per cent of the Australians fighting with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq are dual nationals. Approximately 50 per cent of criminals convicted of major terrorism offences are dual nationals. Why should our nation continue to afford the rights and privileges of Australian citizenship to criminals who act against our national interest, endanger our national security and do not meet the community expectations of mainstream Australians?

The advent of international terrorist groups has changed the ground rules. Our country does not have to be formally at war with a sovereign nation; rather, we are confronted with terrorist groups employing the tactics of guerrilla warfare against states. The enemy is difficult to identify and does not conform to established rules or military convention. This has manifested itself in the most brutal and barbaric conduct, including the targeting of innocent civilians, beheadings, crucifixions, torture, bombings, kidnap and rape. As a government we have a duty to ensure that these acts of terror do not spread to the Australian mainland and that we protect our homeland security.

The proposed amendments are necessary to modernise our current laws, which only strip dual nationals of their Australian citizenship if they serve with a foreign army at war with Australia. Section 19 of the Australian Citizenship Act 1948 states that:

An Australian citizen who, under the law of a foreign country, is a national or citizen of that country and serves in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia shall, upon commencing so to serve, cease to be an Australian citizen.

Despite being involved in a number of armed conflicts since 1949, Australia has not declared a formal state of war on another sovereign nation in that period. Hence section 19 has not been required up to now.

Every new citizen takes the citizenship pledge, which is a solemn oath:

From this time forward, under God, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

Swearing or affirming an oath is a legally binding process which must be enforceable at law and actually mean something. There are many thousands of deserving and worthy people waiting in the queue to become Australian citizens. Dual nationals engaged in terrorist activities do not deserve to be afforded the rights and privileges of Australian citizens, such as freedom of entry into Australia, immunity from deportation, access to social security benefits or taxpayer funded legal aid. The public should not have to bear the substantial cost of trials, legal aid and incarcerating these criminals in Australian maximum security correctional facilities for long-term life sentences.

The duties and responsibilities expected of all Australian citizens include: obeying the law; participating in employment and paying taxes; defending Australia by enlisting in the Australian defence forces should the need arise; and voting at elections and referenda. Persons swearing the oath have a legally enforceable obligation to be loyal to Australia, comply with Australian laws and not commit acts which are prejudicial to Australia's national interests. Those who fail to uphold their oath or affirmation must be held to account. The coalition government is introducing this legislation to ensure that this overwhelmingly held community expectation is upheld. It is fair to say that the vast majority of law-abiding migrants wholeheartedly support this legislation. As new citizens, they have chosen to commit their allegiance to Australia and they have little tolerance for individuals who diminish the reputation of the migrant community through their participation in terrorist activities.

Various lobby groups have raised concerns about this legislation, believing that it is too harsh or draconian. When it comes to national security, the interests of the vast majority of Australian citizens must take precedence over the rights of dual nationals who have broken an oath, displayed treasonous conduct and been disloyal to Australia. The provisions contained in the proposed legislation are consistent with Australia's international treaty obligations and will not leave a person stateless. The proposed legislation does not exclude the role of the courts. Persons who have lost citizenship may seek a judicial review on the facts. In addition, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection has the power to grant an exemption if there is a law enforcement or security imperative.

In summary, this bill proposes amendments to the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to ensure that dual nationals who are convicted of specific terrorism related offences will face the loss of their Australian citizenship. Individuals who are also nationals or citizens of a country other than Australia renounce their Australian citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in terrorist activities using arms, explosive or lethal devices; engaging in terrorist acts; directing the activities of a terrorist organisation; recruiting, financing or providing training for terrorism. In the interests of preserving Australia's national security, I commend the bill to the House.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not know whether I am going to be on my own in this place in doing so, but I will be opposing the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015. I will be opposing this bill because it will do nothing to make Australia safer. It will divide us into two classes of citizens based on whether you have dual nationality or not and it will trash one of the most fundamental principles of civil law and the English constitutional system that we have taken for granted for many years—that is, if you are born in the country, you are a citizen of the country, and it is not the parliament's prerogative to take it away.

If you are born in Australia, you are a citizen of Australia. If you do something wrong by breaking the law, you get prosecuted and, if you are convicted, you get locked up. It is called the rule of law. Under the rule of law you get a trial and, if you are found guilty, you suffer the consequences. That is as it should be. That is the case whether you commit a parking offence, a murder or terrorist-related offences. That is as it should be as well. This bill takes a further step and says: if you commit a certain category of offences and you happen to also be a dual national, the Minister for Immigration and Border Control can decide that you are no longer a citizen.

I do not know that there many people who were born in Australia who would look at the immigration minister at the moment and say, 'I trust him to decide whether I get to remain a citizen or not.' People would say, 'If you are convicted of an offence, you do your time.' If you are convicted of one of the most heinous terrorism related offences, a legitimate terrorist offence where you have been convicted of causing or threatening to cause harm to the Australian people, expect to go away for a long time. That is what most people would expect. But I do not think people would expect to go somewhere we have never gone before—that is, to say that the immigration minister can now, with the stroke of a pen, take away your citizenship as well.

There is absolutely no evidence that this bill is going to make us any safer. Even a moment's reflection would make you understand why. If you are someone who wishes to do so much harm to people in Australia that you want to kill them, plant a bomb or go to the point where perhaps you are prepared to kill yourself, as we have tragically seen around the world far too often recently, do you really think the fact that the immigration minister might be able to take away your citizenship is going to change your mind? If you are prepared to kill yourself as you take out the lives of others around you, a law like this is going to do nothing to stop you from taking that heinous, barbaric step.

That is why, when you scrutinise this bill, you struggle to find any evidence in support of it. But you find many people whose job it is in civil society to stand up to parliamentarians at times when emotion could get the better of this place and say: 'No. Hang on. You need some sober judgement. If you are going to change laws with respect to citizenship, do not breach'—they pleaded with us—'the fundamental principle that someone who was born here remains a citizen unless they choose to voluntarily renounce it. Do not breach that.' That is coming from defenders of some of the most basic legal and human rights institutions in our country. They have come forward and said that this bill is dangerously and irreparably flawed. Coming, as it does, in this current political context, it is deeply unfortunate that we are being asked to pass this bill and rush it through.

In the aftermath of the horrific attacks in Paris, Waleed Aly gave a speech on The Project that I think summarised and spoke to where most of the Australian population is at. It is worth reminding ourselves of what he said because it is germane to exactly this kind of bill and exactly this kind of response from parliamentarians. He said:

…there's no doubt that [Paris] was an Islamist terrorist attack, probably executed under ISIL's flag. What we don't know yet is if the attack was planned, ordered or funded by ISIL's leaders in Syria, because the problem is - this is what ISIL do.

They take credit for any act of terrorism on Western soil so that they appear bigger and tougher than they actually are. They did the same thing last year with the shooting at Canada's Parliament, and when a bloke ran around New York with a hatchet attacking people. And again with the Sydney siege. ISIL didn't control these guys. They were DIY terrorists who recruited themselves, but ISIL don't want you to know that. How do I know? Because ISIL told us that they don't want you to know that in their monthly magazine. In October last year they wrote, "It is important that the killing becomes attributed to patrons of the Islamic State who have obeyed its leadership. This can easily be done with anonymity. Otherwise, crusader media makes such attacks appear to be random killings."

There's a reason ISIL want to appear so powerful. The reality is all the land they control has been taken from weak enemies. They're pinned down by airstrikes and just last weekend they lost a significant part of their territory.

Peter Jennings said:

They really don't have the capacity to hit back against the combat aircraft of the west.

Waleed Aly continued:

ISIL don't want you to know they would be quickly crushed if they ever faced a proper army on a real battlefield. They want you to fear them. They want you to get angry. They want all of us to become hostile. And here's why; ISIL's strategy is to split the world into two camps. It's that black and white. Again we know this because they told us.

Last year they declared, "there is no grayzone in this crusade against the Islamic State, ... the world has split into two encampments, one for the people of faith, the other for the people of disbelief, all in preparation for the final Great War." They want to start World War III; a global war between Muslims and everyone else. That's what they want to create. They want societies like France, and here in Australia, to turn on each other.

They want countries like ours to reject their Muslims AND vilify them.

ISIL leaders would be ecstatic to hear that since the atrocity in Paris, Muslims have been threatened and attacked in England , America, and here in Australia. Because this evil organisation has it in their heads that if they can make Muslims the enemy of the West, then Muslims in France, England, America and here in Australia will have nowhere to turn, but to ISIL. That's exactly what they did in Iraq and now they want to go global. Saying that out loud; it's both dumbfounding in its stupidity and blood-curdling in its barbarity.

We're all feeling a million raging emotions right now. I'm angry at these terrorists. I'm sickened by the violence. I'm crushed for the families that have been left behind. But I won't be manipulated. We all need to come together. I know how that sounds. It's a cliché. But it's also true, because it's exactly what ISIL doesn't want. If you are a member of parliament (or has-been member of parliament), preaching hate at a time when we need love, you're helping ISIL. They've told us that.

If you're a Muslim leader telling your community they have no place here, or a non-Muslim basically saying the same thing, you're helping ISIL. They've told us that. Or whether you're just someone with a Facebook or Twitter account firing off misguided missives of hate, you're just helping ISIL. They've told us that. And I'm pretty sure, right now, none of us want to help these bastards.

That is what the Australian people are feeling, and that is spot on. That is why it is so disappointing that this Tony Abbott era piece of legislation is being brought before the parliament this week, where we are being asked to say, 'Even if you were born here, if you happen to have a dual nationality, you are now going to have less rights than everybody else and the immigration minister can just take away your citizenship.' That is sending precisely the wrong message at precisely the wrong time. It is exactly in these moments that we must defend the principles that are under attack. Those principles include a very basic one which is that if you are born in a country, you are a citizen of that country, and it is not up to a minister of the day to decide to take that away. Do something wrong and expect to be prosecuted; expect even to go to jail—potentially, for a very long time. But to say all of a sudden, 'You are now no longer a citizen,' is, everyone else is telling us, a bridge too far.

I urge the government to listen to what the Prime Minister said at the start of question time today, because that was the response, in many respects, that people were looking for. That is exactly the kind of response that the country wants. The country does not want us to start creating two classes of citizens. The country does not want us in this parliament to start giving up the basic rights that have been fought for and that now, many are arguing, are under attack.

I am not prepared to give up a fundamental principle about the relationship between citizens and the state. I am prepared to join with every other member, I think, of this parliament to say that people who want to do us harm deserve to have the full force of the law brought down on them. But this legislation is not going to make us safer. It is going to divide people and it is a bridge too far.

Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, I rise not only to support the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 but to strongly support it. This bill provides three new ways for a dual national to lose their citizenship. In this current geopolitical climate, where nations like Canada and the United Kingdom are adopting new measures to protect their communities from terrorists and their supporters and sympathisers, the coalition government is committed to keeping our community safe from those who seek do us harm.

The events in Paris and the airliners that have been brought down by terrorists show a disturbing state occurring across the globe. It is also disturbing that, in only nine months, 23 Australian citizens have been arrested in counter-terrorism operations. It is even more disturbing that our security agencies are currently managing over 400 high priority counter-terrorism investigations. My constituents in Paterson deserve to feel safe as they go about their everyday lives—as, indeed, do all Australians. If someone leaves our sovereign borders to join a terrorist organisation abroad, they have spat on the face of our nation and the democratic rights, freedoms and benefits that this nation provides to them. These are the very freedoms that our forefathers fought to secure with blood that has been spilt for our golden shores. And they spit in our face!

There is no doubt that terrorism is a growing threat to the Australian people, and we want to get this right. That is why the government asked the Hon. Philip Ruddock MP and Senator the Hon. Concetta Fierravanti-Wells to chair the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to review this bill. This government takes citizenship very seriously. For too long, we have focused on giving those who may pose a threat to our country the benefit of the doubt. Currently, extensive processes with lengthy investigations mean that our security agencies cannot act with the speed and precision required to prevent a potential attack.

This bill provides three new ways in which dual nationals can lose their citizenship. For the first time, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection will oversee the automatic revocation of citizenship for persons engaging in relevant conduct. Relevant conduct pertains to a person who acts inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in terrorist conduct. The current loss of citizenship provision for a person fighting in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia will be extended. Importantly, under this bill, a person's citizenship will automatically cease if they fight on behalf of or serve a terrorist organisation overseas. This extension of the existing rules is critical and crucial, as terrorist organisations such as the ISIS death cult are not countries or states.

The proposed measures in this bill will be automatic. After being briefed by the relevant intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection will issue a notice that the person has ceased being a citizen. It is not a decision of the minister alone; it is acting on the expert advice of our agencies. It is important to note that the minister can determine when it is appropriate to notify the person to avoid any interference with investigations. This process removes the need for the minister to act based on a formal security assessment. Tragically, as we have learned repeatedly in the last twelve months, individuals planning terrorist attacks on Australian people often have no training and can act very quickly. These days, lone-wolf-style attacks only require a knife, a camera, a phone and a victim.

As I mentioned before, this government is focused on getting this right. That is why the bill was referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. As part of the process, members of the public were invited to make submissions on the bill. The consultation examined residency requirements and the citizenship test and pledge, as well as the possibility for certain Australian citizens to lose privileges such as social security payments and consular assistance. Submissions closed in mid-July during the parliamentary winter recess.

After a person's citizenship ceases, the process to return them to their country of nationality would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Suitably, the bill contains provision for ministerial discretion to exempt a person if it is in the public interest to do so. Children of parents who have their citizenship revoked will not automatically lose their citizenship; however, they could lose their citizenship if they engage in relevant conduct themselves. Importantly, a person who has his or her citizenship revoked will be able to seek a judicial review of the facts. This bill is about sensible yet strong action against those who seek to cause harm to the Australian community by engaging in terrorist conduct.

The bill follows the same path as some of our closest political allies around the world, with many nations facing the threat of terrorism by organisations like ISIS, as we saw in Paris. In 2014, the United Kingdom passed legislation that could, under the direction of the UK's Home Secretary, deprive a person of their citizenship on a number of grounds. These grounds include conduct that is not conducive to the public good and engaging in conduct that is prejudicial to the UK's vital interests. Under this legislation, the Home Secretary must have reasonable grounds to believe that the person could acquire another nationality. Similar to the bill before this House, the United Kingdom's legislation cannot render a person stateless. Canada and the United Kingdom ratified the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness in 1966 and 1978 respectively. Australia ratified this convention in 1973. In this current climate, it is imperative that we stay one step ahead of would-be terrorists.

As was mentioned in the national security statement earlier in the year, the number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas is increasing. The number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremist groups overseas is increasing and, disturbingly, the number of potential terrorists in Australia is increasing. The government's highest priority is keeping the community safe from those who seek to do us harm. This is a topic I am incredibly passionate about for a plethora of reasons. Our national security is paramount and must remain on the forefront of our discussions within this House.

The values and freedoms that we sometimes take for granted must exist in a just and humane society where the role of law and justice is maintained and its integrity preserved. As a nation, we are currently facing one of our greatest challenges to these freedoms through the emergence of a number of brutal terrorist organisations that threaten our basic ingrained freedoms. They threaten our livelihood and they threaten our way of life. As a nation, in the wake of a number of terrorist attacks and attempted attacks, we must rally together with a renewed vigour to stop those threats and to take the necessary measures and steps to counteract them.

If someone in our nation leaves to join a terrorist army abroad, the government does not want that person back; the people of Australia do not want that person back. We will stop the return of terrorists, especially those who are dual citizens, through taking away their Australian passport. This is to protect the people of Australia. If you leave our nation to partake in terrorist activity, we will ensure, as far as is practically possible, that you do not return. There is no place in our nation for terrorists who hate our country—yet have sought all the benefits of this nation—and have then gone and joined a fighting terrorist organisation and betrayed our country and committed a treasonous offence against us and our shores. We have no tolerance for actions such as these. There is no place for people who want to do Australians harm simply because of the fact that we are Australian and we enjoy democratic rights and freedoms.

Those fighting against our Defence forces are fighting against all Australia. It is against the law in our nation to take up arms in order to fight and advocate for terrorism. In the action of leaving our nation to join arms with a militant organisation, radicalised individuals—terrorists—have made an active choice. Through doing this, especially if they are dual nationals, they have renounced their Australian citizenship. They will not be permitted back here.

As a government, we have recently taken stringent measures, through cancelling over 115 Australian passports. These are measures we have taken to stop radicalised Australians travelling to conflict zones. These measures are designed to deter individuals who have been radicalised. At the very heart of our efforts as a government, we are acutely aware that directly tackling the drivers of extremism and the radicalisation process at its infancy, even before this, is where we must consolidate our efforts.

I have had overwhelming feedback from my constituents. I will read an extract from a letter my office received recently:

I am writing to you to plead with your judgement and wisdom, in the matter of these Australian Citizens attempting to return to Australia after fighting against our troops. Traitors, to our Nation. They have proved their intentions by sneaking out of our country. They will only be an enormous burden to our economy and way of life. Not to mention, when in prison, they will recruit more idiots. They have made their bed, now it's time for them to lay in it and stay away.

An extract from an email my electorate office received states:

The stripping of people who want to join criminals/terrorists of their citizenship must be as harsh as possible. Anyone who wants to bite the hand that has fed them for many years do not deserve to return here and become "sleepers" with another agenda.

Some very passionate correspondence I received by letter states:

What's it going take any of you to DO THE RIGHT THING, some innocent person, Policeman/woman, Department of Defence Personnel being beheaded, PLEASE, get some bottle, show strength and do like those in those European Countries which have suddenly realised that some within the Muslin community are BAD, yeas Bad! and have started to get tough by deporting those who offend against their countries laws - WILL YOU, as a Government, DO THE SAME, the way things are going I HAVE A GREAT FEAR, that you won't, and just buckle to the whims and wants of the Muslim population here.

DON'T END UP BEING A WEAK GOVERNMENT, DO SOMETHING, PROTECT YOUR CITIZENS, too late when there is blood on the street! A Very Concerned Aussie.

Those are but some of the comments that have been made, yet those comments were received before what happened in Paris and before the airliner was brought down over Egypt. If these comments made by constituents in my electorate of Paterson are anything to go by, fears about the threat of returning foreign terrorist fighters to Australia are real and present throughout our Australian shores. People are genuinely concerned about the threat of foreign fighters returning to our region and carrying out violent extremist acts here on our soil. These threats have garnered a strong response from our country, and through measures such as the passport legislation we are achieving integrity in the passport process.

The Prime Minister announced yesterday that, pursuant to section 35 of the Citizenship Act, we as a government are creating new circumstances under which dual nationals who are terrorists will forfeit their citizenship. As the Prime Minister announced, one way whereby Australian citizenship is lost is renunciation by conduct, so if you engage in terrorism against Australia with a foreign army, you will automatically forfeit your citizenship. The second avenue is revocation by conviction, so if you are convicted of a terrorist offence there will be an assumption that your Australian citizenship is forfeited, should you be a dual national.

To end, using a line coined by the Prime Minister, 'As Australians, we will never, ever sacrifice our freedoms, but we will defend them.' In representing my electorate of Paterson, in the Hunter region of New South Wales, I not only commend this bill to the House; I strongly commend this bill to the House.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to place on record my deep level of concern about the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill. I am grateful to the many learned people who made submissions to the inquiry undertaken by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. I note that some of the concerns expressed were taken into account in the PJC recommendations and have resulted in a bill that is significantly improved from the original bill in terms of being narrower in scope and providing for some review and oversight. I thank the Labor members of the PJC for their efforts in achieving those amendments. Notwithstanding those improvements, I believe the bill is still likely to be judged unconstitutional. In my view, the bill remains contrary to the rule of law and the principles of natural justice and so should not be passed by this parliament.

The government is deceiving the Australian community by presenting this bill as a relatively minor update to the existing Citizenship Act, under which a person ceases to be an Australian citizen if they are a foreign national and serve in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. The government says this bill merely extends those provisions to include anyone who fights overseas for a declared terrorist organisation. But, even with the recent improvements, the bill is much broader than that. New section 33AA provides for renunciation by conduct, which means a dual citizen automatically renounces their citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in terrorist activity. As a result of a recommendation from the intelligence committee, this provision has been amended to limit the operation of the section to persons who have engaged in relevant conduct offshore or to those who have engaged in conduct onshore but left Australia before being brought to trial in respect of that conduct. Although we are informed that this provision is intended to deal with a person who has committed a terrorist act and then fled the country, this is not what the bill actually provides. Under the wording of the bill, a dual citizen who leaves the country for any reason—for example, a week's holiday in Bali—could have their citizenship terminated without trial simply because they are out of the country. In the case where authorities believe a dual citizen has acted in a manner inconsistent with their allegiance to Australia but where the evidence may not be sufficient to convict them of a relevant serious terrorist offence under section 35A, the new section 33AA could allow authorities to wait until the person leaves the country for any reason and then proceed with the automatic renunciation of citizenship. The government might say this is not the intended operation that provision, but there is nothing in the bill to prevent this scenario occurring. The Law Council of Australia, in its submission to the intelligence committee, commented:

… the scheme may be used to avoid the long-standing judicial procedures for testing and challenging evidence in criminal trials that normally apply before a person is presumed to have engaged in unlawful conduct and substantially deprived of their liberty. the scheme may be used to avoid the longstanding judicial procedures for testing and challenging evidence in criminal trials that normally applied before a person is presumed to have engaged in unlawful conduct and substantially deprived of their liberty. This may increase the likelihood of error and mean that innocent persons are mistakenly captured. For this reason, loss of citizenship should ideally only occur after a conviction by a court. This is particularly important where a person is in Australia and the alleged conduct is said to have occurred within Australia and difficulties with foreign evidence are minimal.

Also, as the Australian Human Rights Commission noted in its submission, automatic termination of citizenship means that an individual's circumstances and the relative seriousness of their conduct would not be taken into account. The practice of automatically nullifying a person's citizenship may be justified and make sense in some contexts, as explained by constitutional law Professor Ann Twomey, whose submission to the intelligence committee states:

When the concept of renunciation or loss of citizenship was first formalised in Australian legislation, citizenship was automatically lost as a consequence of 'a voluntary and formal act' of acquiring citizenship of another country, making a formal declaration pronouncing Australian citizenship, serving in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia and residing outside of Australia for a certain period of time. Each of these acts was readily proved by objective facts usually in the possession of governments.

But, as Professor Twomey has noted,

…when it comes to questions of personal intention and knowledge as to matters such as what any training might be used for or what money might be used for, then these would normally be matters that need to be proved before any action could be taken, and could therefore not be triggers for automatic termination of citizenship—at least not without a procedure for determining the facts.

On the question of whether a person has intentionally engaged in conduct inconsistent with their allegiance to Australia, the notion of automatic renunciation is nonsensical: only a human being can make the necessary judgement about the facts that underlie that question of intention before a decision can be made to revoke citizenship. Revocation does not happen magically courtesy of the universe.

From a constitutional point of view, any determination that a person has engaged in criminal conduct with the requisite intention sounds very much like a power that can only be exercised by a court under the doctrine of separation of powers as elucidated by the High Court. In terms of the natural justice aspects of section 33AA, the Law Council notes that its Rule of Law Principles require that 'executive decision making should be subject to meaningful judicial review'.

It is true that the bill does provide that a notice regarding renunciation of citizenship must be given to the person as soon as practicable and that such notice should set out the person's rights of review. Unfortunately, the bill also provides that the minister may decide not to give such notice if he or she is satisfied that this 'could prejudice the security, defence or international relations of Australia'! Given that in such cases a determination has already been made by the executive that a person has engaged in terrorist conduct, it is hard to conceive a situation where the minister would not be satisfied that such a notice could prejudice security, defence or international relations. The minister is not required to have regard to any particular criteria in making this determination. The only responsibility on the minister is to consider whether to revoke such determination every six months. This is far from amounting to the judicial review required under our rule of law.

In my view, section 33AA, which provides for renunciation of citizenship through conduct and does not require a conviction, is unnecessary and, worse, is contrary to the Rule of Law Principles with regard to the presumption of innocence, the requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the administrative law principles applicable to the exercise of discretionary administrative powers which affect persons' rights and interests, as well as constitutional issues of separation of powers.

Similar concerns regarding constitutionality and compliance with the rule of law exist with regard to section 35, which concerns 'automatic' renunciation of citizenship due to fighting for, or being in the service of, a declared terrorist organisation. As with section 33AA, the notion of automatic renunciation is nonsense, given that it will necessarily involve a determination by authorities about the conduct undertaken and whether that constitutes fighting or 'being in the service of' a terrorist organisation.

Some people would argue that any involvement with a terrorist organisation is grounds enough to revoke someone's citizenship, but putting aside the very important question of establishing through a fair process that such conduct has in fact occurred, it is also worth thinking about the complexities already present in the current conflict in the Middle East. For example, in Iraq and Syria, there is a multiplicity of groups operating on the ground, not least the murderous Assad regime itself, and there have already been instances where our military efforts are in alignment with groups on the ground like the PYD that have clear associations with listed terrorist organisations. The issue of whose side Australia is on at any one time is murky at best.

The provision of a personal power vested in the minister to rescind a notice advising a dual citizen that their Australian citizenship has been revoked does not cure the flaw in this bill. There is no obligation on the minister to consider whether to rescind and no mechanism by which such a consideration can be triggered. The rules of natural justice are excluded for the exercises of ministerial power in the bill. Furthermore, as Professor Ben Saul of the University of Sydney observed in his submission, the bill may, with some bitter irony, facilitate terrorism and encourage impunity for terrorist crimes in that

Australian 'terrorists' may remain free to commit terrorism overseas and enjoy an increased likelihood of impunity for their crimes. Foreign fighters who wish to return to Australia would no longer be subject to law enforcement measures in Australia designed to neutralize or contain the threat they pose, such as by arrest, prosecution and imprisonment; imposition of anti-terrorism control orders; surveillance; or deradicalization and rehabilitation strategies. Foreign fighters who wish to remain overseas would no longer be subject to efforts by Australian law enforcement to secure their return to face justice in Australia, such as by extradition, mutual legal assistance, or removal/deportation to Australia.

More generally on the issue of citizenship, I wish to quote an article by John Menadue, former Secretary of the Department of Immigration in the Fraser government, written on 6 August 2015 and titled 'Don't tamper with citizenship':

There are good reasons why we should not tamper with citizenship. Citizenship is a critical and unifying national symbol and should not be used to address alleged short-term problems. Acts committed by Australians should be punished under criminal law and if the law is not effective for the job it should be strengthened. …

A key principle of all citizenship is that people of many different backgrounds can become good and loyal Australian citizens. In the present situation that means that Muslims, like others, can become good Australian citizens. It is belief in that principle that holds this country together. If we debase that principle we should not be surprised that many people, particularly young people with origins in the Middle East, might decide that they have no future in this country. …

As Malcolm Turnbull has said, citizenship revocation should not be a 'bravado' issue and used to weaken our rule of law. Government bravado and promotion of fear is making us less safe. It is undermining citizenship.

I also want to mention the contribution of Professor Kim Rubenstein, who in her evidence to the committee said the following:

I see citizenship as being something much more profound. There are better ways and more appropriate ways for us as a nation to be dealing with concerns about terrorism in a globalised world. I think that even more particularly, in relation to the fact that the Bill is targeting dual citizens in a multicultural nation, the consequence of that will actually be counterproductive to the very principles of trying to create an inclusive society where members of the community are not attracted to terrorist activities or to activities against the Western liberal democratic system.

Both these contributions speak eloquently to the foundational damage that lies in the hasty, reactive, ill-considered and, more than likely, ineffective changes that this bill sets out to make. Some estimates suggest that fully one fifth of all Australians are either dual citizens or eligible to be dual citizens. That is a lot of people potentially affected by this bill. When new citizens take the oath or affirmation, they state:

From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

In my view there have been a number of actions taken by this government that run counter to the rights and liberties that new citizens are asked to respect—and, ironically, this bill would be one of them. What is more, while we rightly ask that citizens uphold and obey Australia's laws, this bill runs counter to long-established principles of the rule of law. On the question of allegiance to any nation it is worth remembering that the notion of allegiance has meant different things at different times throughout our history. I was reminded, during the course of the recent Centenary of Anzac commemorations, that our troops departed to the waving of the Union Jack—and we participated in that war as British subjects.

We should remember, too, the policy of internment that was applied to Australians of Italian, German and Japanese descent in the course of the Second World War. That was a time that could genuinely be described as a period in which the fate of entire nations and the safety of their citizens was at threat. Yet now we rightly look back with regret on the decision made to mistreat and intern thousands of Australian residents as 'enemy aliens' or 'naturalised persons of enemy origins', including many born in Australia. We should not make the mistake of believing that we are incapable in 2015 of similar errors of judgement, or of introducing similarly ill-judged and ineffective policy.

What concerns me about laws like the one we are debating here today is the way they fit into a merry-go-round of circular reasoning that is dishonest about the real world and to some degree works to perpetuate the problems they purport to address. This particular bill is unlikely to give rise to any mass revocation of Australian citizenship, but that does not militate against its fundamental wrongness—because, just as the minister said in his second reading speech that no-one should take their Australian citizenship lightly, so it must also be said that no government should take away, lightly or lazily, a person's citizenship.

It is highly questionable whether this bill adds anything of great substance to Australia's legal and law enforcement protections against those who might do us harm. In the broadest terms, Australia is a remarkably safe place. Indeed there are few safer places on this planet. We should not be complacent about danger, but we must be vigilant when it comes to the potential for government to make us less free and even less safe by banging on the drum of fear. On the list of real dangers to the wellbeing of ordinary Australians, the prospect of harm from terrorism ranks a long way down. Harm from tobacco, harm from alcohol, harm from domestic violence, harm from suicide—these are much greater sources of harm than terrorism by some considerable margin. That does not mean we should ignore the risk of terrorist acts, or forgo policy and program work to prevent them. It does mean we should be honest with ourselves and the Australian people and resist the political temptation to exaggerate our response, which inevitably means we cause damage to our long-established framework of rights and freedoms. In the end, and I suspect from the beginning, the purpose of this bill is simply to act tough, to emphasise the issue of security, to inflate the threat posed to Australia and to Australians, and to reap the cynical political benefits of so doing.

Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to start off by saying what a privilege it is to be an Australian citizen and to be in this chamber today. The Remembrance Day ceremony at the War Memorial this year was truly memorable—although we did get a little bit wet—and it highlighted the fact that we truly do live in the best country in the world. We have freedoms that millions of other people from around the world can only dream of. Australians have died so that we can enjoy our Australian way of life. We are now coming to terms with the recent Paris, Beirut and Mali terrorist attacks. It is clear that no place is immune from the threat of this evil. Australia and other world leaders must coordinate their efforts, both politically and from a military perspective, to defeat those who choose to do us harm and to whom human life has no value. This is a matter of urgency—we must ensure that our borders and our Australian way of life are protected.

I am pleased to speak on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015. The Review of Australia's Counter-Terrorism Machinery chillingly found that the terrorist threat in Australia is rising. I wish I had the same level of uplifted view of what the world might be as the member for Fremantle, but unfortunately I do not. Specifically, the number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas is increasing, the number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremists is increasing and the number of potential terrorists is also on the rise. Australian security agencies are currently managing over 400 high priority counter-terrorism investigations. This has more than doubled since 2014. Therefore now is the time to act, and act this government will.

This bill will deal with the threat caused by dual citizens who act in a manner contrary to their allegiance to Australia. Let me make the point that if you are doing no wrong you have nothing to fear from this bill. As I have said, the time to act is now. About 110 Australians are currently fighting or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. And they are only the ones we know about. About 190 people in Australia are providing support to individuals and groups in the Syria-Iraq conflicts through financing and recruitment or are seeking to travel. Again, these are just the ones we know about. This bill will provide for the loss of Australian citizenship in the case of dual nationals engaged in terrorism-related conduct. It amends the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to insert a purpose clause setting out the fundamental principles upon which the amendments are based. It also outlines circumstances in which dual citizens cease to be Australian citizens through their engagement in terrorism-related activities. The bill has been widely consulted on, having been referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for inquiry and report, with the committee tabling its report last month. It made a number of recommendations which have been included in the bill—it is in line with the bipartisan recommendations from the committee.

As I am sure has been said many times during this debate, citizenship should be respected and not taken for granted. This bill is a necessary and an appropriate response to the increasing likelihood of a terrorist threat. This bill is so important to my electorate of Durack because my electorate is so sparsely populated. It is so large—and I know there are other electorates like it—we require a helicopter to muster cattle, and we also have billions of dollars of resources projects dotted around the coastline and inland. I would have more volunteer sea rescue bodies than any other Australian electorates, and Durack would have more visits from the Royal Flying Doctor Service because of the number of towns in this incredibly remote electorate.

We need to make sure Australia remains a safe country. As a federal member, I have an obligation to keep safe not just my constituents of Durack but other Australians as well. This government was elected to deliver a strong, prosperous and innovative economy for a safe and secure Australia. The Turnbull government is 100 per cent determined to protect the community from those who are engaged in or are supporting terrorist activities and who seek to do us harm. This bill enables the government to strip Australian citizenship from dual nationals who participate in terrorism or terrorist related activities. As I say, if you have done no harm, you have nothing to fear. This bill will ensure that the over 300 towns and communities in my electorate of Durack and over 90,000 constituents remain safe.

As I said at the start of this speech, last week we commemorated one of our most important days on the Australian calendar: Remembrance Day. Around Australia, including in Durack, we all took a moment of silence. So, from plumbers and tradies in the north and farmers in the mid-west and the wheat belt to small business owners in the Gascoyne, all stopped to pay their respects to those who put their lives on the line to ensure that Australia is the great country we all love today and that it continues to be so. Those very same people illustrated that they would rather show their respect and appreciation and perhaps lose a phone call for another job or perhaps give up half an hour of work, and I think this speaks volumes about Australia and the people of Durack that they too want to keep Australia safe.

We cannot go soft on terrorism. We must keep Australia safe and keep the standards that we apply to allow people who we choose to enter this country and remain in this country. I am sure it has been said a number of times in this debate: we know it is not rocket science but it sure is common sense. It is plain and simple common sense. We must not weaken, we must strengthen, the laws of who can and cannot come into this country. Someone who loses their citizenship automatically receives an ex-citizen visa. If they are onshore, they lose their Australia citizenship—that is what is proposed in this bill. That visa may then be subject to cancellation on character grounds. This bill will legislate that a declared terrorist organisation will be a subset of those who are listed for the purposes of terrorism offences under the Criminal Code.

As I said in this House earlier this month, only those sitting on this side of the House have a track record when it comes to immigration policy. So effective is our stop-the-boats initiative that the Labor Party virtually endorsed it at their national conference in June this year. This bill that we are discussing today will further strengthen Australia's border control and ensure we maintain our high migration standards. There is no doubt that society has changed, and we as legislators must move with society.

I commend this bill to the House.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a multicultural country that sees diversity as one of our national strengths, Australia welcomes migrants. Those who become Australian citizens by choice rather than by birth honour our nation and are honoured by our nation with the conferral of citizenship. Citizenship is priceless and it should not be eroded arbitrarily. Governments should be very careful before diminishing people's rights in the name of security, and that includes people's rights not to be deprived of their citizenship, something that forms part of a person's identity.

As I said, Australia welcomes migrants. People who have come from across the seas have made a vast contribution to our society, to our economy and to our nation. Australia is a great example of a successful immigrant nation and a successful multicultural society. We are a diverse nation that has benefitted from successive waves of migrants, each adding something new. Since the end of the Second World War, new arrivals from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas have transformed Australia. In the space of not much time we have gone from being largely Anglo to multicultural and cosmopolitan place we are today. My own electorate on the south side of Brisbane would not be the same without the contribution of migrant communities such as the Greek community and the Vietnamese community, large groups of people who have come to Brisbane to make a home and to provide for their families.

Building a cohesive society takes acceptance. It takes communities where everyone feels welcome and that they belong. That is why I have been a strong supporter of Welcome to Australia events and other events aimed at bringing people together and emphasising the things that we share ahead of the things that divide us. And that is why I am a strong supporter of dual citizenship. It allows people to maintain their heritage and commitment to their homeland while making a new and equally strong commitment to Australia. Dual citizenship makes sense in a world of globalisation, instant communications and increased ability to travel. It is a concept we should retain. Citizenship itself as an institution is important to the nation and is also of fundamental importance to the individuals. Being an Australian matters to people. When I say that I am an Australian, that is a way of telling the world something about myself, but it also is a way of telling myself something about who I am. Citizenship is priceless and that is why it should not be taken away arbitrarily. That is also why the institution itself of citizenship should not be, as I said, eroded or undermined arbitrarily.

It is important that all Australians value their citizenship regardless of how they became a citizen, whether by birth in Australia, by migrating and choosing to become a citizen or by being born overseas to Australian parents. Our citizenship is a unique, formal identification that carries responsibilities and bestows rights and privileges. But Australian citizenship is more than those rights and those privileges and those responsibilities—as important as all of them are. We live in one of the most diverse societies in the world. Our Australian citizenship, together with the commitments that underpin it, is one of the things unites us all with a common identity and a desire to work toward a shared future. It symbolises our sense of belonging to this country. So taking away someone's citizenship is a grave matter. Imagine if someone said to you or to me, 'You are no longer an Australian.' Imagine how you would feel, Mr Deputy Speaker Goodenough. It is something that should happen only if strict and well-defined criteria are met and only through the operation of fair laws, democratically made and subject to the supervision of the courts.

As law-makers we should bear in mind the significance of diminishing people's rights in the name of security. In debates such as these, it is important not to lose sight of just what it is our nation is trying to achieve and the reason that we are putting our own armed forces in harm's way. The reason we want to prevent our own citizens from entering war zones to fight with foreign armies is to preserve our security here in Australia. The purpose of doing that is to ensure that Australians, now and in the future, can live their lives in a free, fair and open democracy, enjoying political, civil, economic, social and cultural rights. To unduly diminish those same rights in the name of preserving security would be wrong. The balance is not easy. I do not claim that it is. But democracies have faced this challenge in the past. It is not new; we continue to face it.

During the Second World War, Britain wrestled with similar questions. Lord Atkin gave a famous minority judgement in a case where similar issues were being considered. It is now widely thought to be the view that should have prevailed. He said:

In this country amidst the clash of arms the laws are not silent. They may be changed, but they speak the same language in war as in peace. It has always been one of the pillars of freedom, one of the principles of liberty for which on recent authority we are now fighting, that the judges are no respecters of persons and stand between the subject and any attempted encroachments on his liberty by the executive, alert to see that any coercive action is justified in law.

It was a different type of law from the one that we are considering now, but the principles that underpin balancing those rights with encroachments on liberty and that ensure the rule of law in the supervision of the courts remain very important. Balancing those things is a challenge right now for us—to protect Australians without unduly diminishing the rights that make this a free and fair and open place to live. That is why Labor sought to work with the government to improve this bill, which was, frankly, unpassable in its original form.

I commend the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security for the work it did on recommending amendments to this legislation that turn it into a bill that seeks to better balance the considerations that I have mentioned. Those recommendations are reflected in the amendments to this bill. Labor will support the amendments and the amended bill.

Our approach to national security has always been to work with the government in the national interest. As the shadow minister, Richard Marles, noted in his contribution in the second reading debate on this legislation:

National security is not a matter which is owned by either party. …The vast majority of members of the Labor Party and conservative parties, evidently, have enormous concern for the security of our fellow Australian citizens.

I agree with what the shadow minister said. Some have argued that Labor should simply oppose legislation that this Conservative government brings to this place, but that would be irresponsible and we will not be irresponsible. The more responsible course is to work with the government to improve the bill, not just leave it to the Tories to try their luck with the crossbenches.

Our citizenship laws already allow for a person's citizenship to be revoked if they fight as a member of another country's armed forces. It is not unreasonable that, given the current environment, where we face hostilities by non-state actors, the law be updated to include fighting with non-state actors. The provisions in this bill applying to those convicted of a terrorism related offence will now be amended such that the list of offences to which the section relates is reduced. For example, an offence relating to the destruction of Commonwealth property which was in the original bill is no longer included in the list.

The provisions in the bill relating to conduct inconsistent with allegiance to Australia have also been amended such that they now apply only to dual citizens who engage in this conduct offshore, or who have engaged in this conduct onshore and have subsequently left Australia. I am told that this means that the legislation will now have potential application to only dozens of people rather than to the millions of Australians who are dual citizens or who may have access to dual citizenship, as would have been the case prior to the amendments.

The bill also will now outline a set of criteria for the minister to consider before declaring an organisation a terrorist organisation for the purposes of the act. The declaration of organisations as terrorist will be a disallowable instrument, meaning the parliament will have greater oversight in respect of that process. The minister will now be required to provide or make reasonable attempts to provide the dual citizen with notice of the revocation unless the notification would compromise ongoing operations or national security. The decision not to provide notice must be reviewed every six months thereafter. Importantly, under this revised bill, revocation of a person's citizenship will not affect the citizenship of other family members, including children.

Dual citizens who were convicted of a serious terrorist offence within the last 10 years and who were sentenced by a judge to a minimum of 10 years in prison for that offence may have their citizenship revoked under the new laws. As a result of amendments recommended by the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, revocation of citizenship in these limited circumstances will be subject to the minister's discretion, having regard to a number of criteria, including current security threats. The government will be required to publicly report every six months on the number of times the changes have been applied and to provide a brief statement on the reasons for which they were applied. Most importantly, a person affected by any of these changes will have the right to seek from the courts a review in respect of the loss or revocation of their citizenship, and that will be under the jurisdiction of the Federal Court.

These amendments are critical to legislation such as this if we are to preserve our open society and strong democracy. As I said, the bill in its original form was, frankly, unpassable. It took the work of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security in making around 30 recommendations for the amendment of this bill to put it into a form that could be considered. Narrowing the focus of the bill, limiting ministerial discretion, allowing judicial scrutiny for those affected: all of those things make this a better bill but also, importantly, balance the need to be vigilant about our national security with the imperative to ensure that our rights as Australians, our rights as people who live in a free, fair and open democracy, are not unduly diminished—and of course the imperative to maintain the rule of law and to continue to ensure that we live in a society that respects the rule of law.

As I said at the outset, Australia welcomes migrants. Migrants have made a significant, even massive, contribution to our economy, to our society and to our nation. Dual citizenship is one of the arrows in our quiver when it comes to building cohesion because you can maintain that connection to your homeland while making an equal commitment to your new country, Australia. It really does matter; being an Australian really does matter. It is part of our identity. It is part of your identity and part of mine. You cannot put a price on the value of citizenship; it is invaluable. Because it is so valuable, we should not take it away arbitrarily. We should be careful that our laws are limited in scope and apply only in the most egregious circumstances when we are talking about depriving people of their citizenship. Deciding to become a citizen is a big deal and that decision is something that, as a concept, as an institution, we should continue to respect.

So governments should be very careful before diminishing people's civil, political and other rights in the name of security. We as a parliament should be very careful to ensure that the laws that we scrutinise and pass balance those rights, those obligations, those concerns and those imperatives. If we do not do that, we are not just failing the people affected by the bill at hand, we are failing the tradition of Western democracies, where parliaments have been at pains to ensure that the laws we make and the decisions we make, whether in times of conflict or in times of peace, continue to maintain the values that we share. You might ask: if we are not fighting for those values, if we are not fighting for freedom, for fairness, for an open democracy and for the rule of law, what are we fighting for? To undermine those important parts of what it means to be Australian in the name of protecting Australians is something that should be done in a very limited, narrow, sensible and cautious way. It is for that reason that it is important that the government of the day and the alternative government of the day, the opposition, have worked together on the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security to seek to make appropriate recommendations to improve this bill. But it is also important that, as the people who seek to make the rules for this nation, we continue to work together on matters of national security in the national interest.

Thank you for the opportunity to address this bill. I am pleased to support the bill as amended.

Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015. In doing so, I think it is worthwhile to begin by stepping back and asking ourselves, 'What is the motivation for this bill?' In doing that, I went to the purpose clause, which mentions three critical concepts. One is reciprocal rights and obligations, the second is shared values and the third is allegiance to Australia. It is worth quoting the purpose clause because I think it is well constructed. It says:

… the Parliament recognises that Australian citizenship is a common bond, involving reciprocal rights and obligations, and that citizens may, through certain conduct incompatible with the shared values of the Australian community, demonstrate that they have severed that bond and repudiated their allegiance to Australia.

Before I speak to some of the detail, we need to clarify what those shared values are because, fundamentally, this will be a very important act of parliament, if passed, which is aimed at preserving those values. In the wake of the Paris atrocities, we are hearing a great deal about Western values. In many of our national debates about citizenship, nationality, sovereignty and even immigration, we also hear a lot about these so-called shared values that are sometimes referred to as 'Western' values. But let's be specific, indeed, let's be loud and proud about what those values are because, in discussing them, we are not just talking about our way of life or our lifestyle; we are talking about the fundamental freedoms and assumptions that underpin our society. They lay the very foundations for our tolerance, our inclusiveness and our diversity.

What are those values? Unsurprisingly, they are referred to expressly, in one way or another, in our Constitution, or, in recent years, they have been implied by the High Court in interpreting that Constitution. That Constitution makes it very clear that our founders assumed that, in this country, there would be a right to a fair trial, that property held could not be taken by the government without fair compensation and that there should be freedom of religion and separation of church and state. These, of course, are our core freedoms of modern, liberal democracies. Added to that are the remaining core freedoms which the High Court has found by implication in our Constitution. One is the freedom of political communication—in effect, freedom of speech. Related to this, of course, are the freedom of conscience, freedom of thought and freedom of association.

Our Constitution also implies that citizens have a right to vote. In other words, democracy cannot be taken away by this parliament. None of these fundamental freedoms can be taken away. Underpinning all of them is the assumption that our system operates under the rule of law, that every person is equal before the law and that every person is subject to the law. Our system works with the extraordinary checks, balances and conventions that are absolutely inherent in the Westminster system. With the gift of the separation of powers from the United States to help it along, it ensures that these freedoms can never be taken away. Our core political institutions were founded on an assumption that we will never lose sight of these freedoms.

I would argue strongly that these first generation freedoms that I have described have made us great, just as they have made our friends in places like the United States, Canada, France and the United Kingdom great. Without these freedoms, many things we all take for granted would fall away. These include the right to be free from discrimination and the right to access to welfare for the vulnerable. If, for example, we did not have well-established, predictable property rights, how could our market based system thrive and provide the revenue for important welfare support? If we did not have a proper, identified role for courts and parliaments then what would stop parliaments legislating to prevent courts from reviewing the decisions of the executive branch of government? If we did not have courts enforcing our laws, fairly and without fear or favour, would anyone bother to pay tax? These fundamental freedoms are real. They make us what we are. They work.

Coming back to the bill before the House, I ask: why is it important to assert these values in the context of a bill which promotes and embraces the idea of 'allegiance to Australia'? It is important because the people who seek to harm us here in Australia and to harm our friends and allies explicitly reject those freedoms. These terrorists do not want to kill us for the sake of killing us. They do not want to harm us because they have nothing better to do. It is much more categorical than that. These people reject outright our fundamental freedoms. They do not believe in a separation of church and state. They believe that church and state are one and the same. They do not believe in political freedoms whatsoever. You can forget a fair trial; indeed, you can probably forget any trial at all. Women can forget the right to be free from discrimination or the freedom to marry whom they choose. You marry whom you are told to marry and when you will marry. You are utterly subjugated to your husband—a husband who is, in turn, subjugated to the caliphate. We need to explain this to Australians. We need to explain it without rancour. If Daesh were to achieve its goals, it would destroy our system, our beliefs and our foundations.

Now to you, Mr Deputy Speaker Kelly, and me, the aims and goals of Daesh seem ludicrous and preposterous—but that is not so obvious to everyone. A recent Lowy poll found that only 39 per cent of young people agreed with the statement that 'democracy is preferable to any other form of government'. Only 39 per cent of young Australians believe in democracy. This is a very serious problem. When we speak more generally about our so-called shared values, our Western values, we cannot assume that everyone understands what this means. We certainly cannot assume that every law abiding citizen in this country fully grasps just what these values are, or how important they are to our very being. I believe a great number of Australians have lost sight of why it is so important to defend these values. The last time that we truly defended them was in the Second World War. In that conflict, Australians were in no doubt about what was at stake. And later, during the Cold War years, we were often reminded of those values. They stayed at the front of our minds. But, since the fall of the Berlin Wall and since the demise of the USSR, our memory of failed alternatives to liberal democracy is fading. This is extremely dangerous. It is why Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote last week that one of the most essential things we can do is to win the battle of ideas. This bill actually engages in that battle of ideas, because it sends a clear message to not only those who have abandoned our values but those who actually fight against them—and we will not tolerate that. By repudiating our values, our fundamental freedoms, by fighting directly against those values, you will have repudiated your allegiance to Australia. These people are now forewarned that, if they do go overseas to fight, or if they do engage in terrorist activity here, they will run the risk that they will never come back or that they will be deported.

Any delay in the passing of this bill will give Australia's network of domestic and internationally based extremists the advantage. I agree with Michael Phelan, Deputy Commissioner of National Security at the Australian Federal Police, who says that keeping people who engage in terrorism offshore 'is one less thing the AFP have to deal with'. The Deputy Director-General, counterterrorism, of ASIO concurs. He also directly supports any measure that can keep problems offshore and reduce the direct threat to Australia.

The fact that these measures relate to dual citizenship is incredibly important. Dual citizenship is a legislative permission, granted by the parliament. It is not a human right. Many other countries do not allow it. It only became widely available in Australia in 2002. The former Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Bret Walker, raised a deep concern about dual or multiple citizenship and its implication for Australia's counterterrorism effort. The monitor asserted that it was a mistake in 2002 for the parliament to grant such an entitlement and recommended that multiple citizenship be abolished. That issue may be for another day; but, today, it is important to emphasise that the persons to whom these amendments apply are also citizens of other countries, and therefore claim another allegiance—and, as a practical matter, have somewhere else to go. These amendments will not in any way render any person stateless.

It is worth noting that several months ago, the UN's top counterterrorist official, Jean-Paul Laborde, said:

…if somebody has a double citizenship and one state wants to protect the society, they have to take the measures they weigh are best for society.

In front of us are those measures, and I support them.

The amended legislation will provide three ways in which a person who is a national or citizen of a country other than Australia can cease to be an Australian citizen. The first element is renunciation by conduct—that is the new section 33AA. This provides that a person who is a national or citizen of a country in addition to Australia renounces their Australian citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in specified conduct. That relevant conduct includes financing terrorism and financing a terrorist. Automatic loss of citizenship will be triggered whether the conduct takes place inside or outside Australia.

The second element of this bill expands the existing section 35 to provide for automatic cessation of citizenship if a person is also a citizen of another country and is overseas and fights for, or is in the service of, a declared terrorist organisation. The minister may declare a terrorist organisation for the purposes of section 35, but such a declaration is contingent on that organisation being listed by the Australian government. The minister must also be satisfied on reasonable grounds that the organisation is indirectly or directly engaged in or planning a terrorist act. Importantly, a declaration by the minister of a declared terrorist organisation is reviewable by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

The third element of this bill provides a power for the minister to determine that a person's citizenship has been lost once they have been convicted of a relevant offence and sentenced to a total imprisonment period of at least 6 years. Loss of citizenship is not automatic upon the conviction, and the list of offences is limited to the most serious crimes. We are talking about convictions for things like treason, espionage, terrorism, the use of lethal explosives, and treachery.

In closing, I remind the House that Australian citizens involved in terrorism not only reject our foundational values; they actually set out to destroy them. Most migrants come to this country for a better life. At a recent gathering in Goulburn it was an honour to be introduced to new citizens from India, Zimbabwe and the Netherlands. You could see the excitement in their eyes. Their happiness was evident, in joining the melting pot that is this great nation—to become one of us. I could clearly see and feel in my heart that these new citizens subscribe to the values I have spoken about. They know they will hit the jackpot when they become an Australian citizen. They also expect the Australian government to uphold and preserve the values and freedoms we are famous for. That is exactly what this bill does. I commend it to the House.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 is about Australian citizenship, the fundamental right upon which all other rights as Australians rests. Citizenship is assumed but not defined in our Constitution. This is actually a conscious step of the founding fathers. They debated the issue at quite some length during a number of the sittings but decided, in the final draft of the Constitution, to leave the matter silent. At the time, of course, we were all subjects of the Crown. Citizenship at that point in time was synonymous with being a British subject. In fact, it was not until 1948-49 that this parliament assumed for itself the right to determine Australian citizenship, and the conditions upon which that would occur. Prior to that, the most that the Australian colonial parliaments, and then this parliament, could do was deem who was or was not a subject of the Crown—a British subject within these dominions.

In the parliamentary session that follows the atrocities that have occurred in France, Syria and Mali, it is very foolish indeed to suggest that this bill is not about something else, as well. It is for this reason that everybody who has spoken in this debate today has made mention of those atrocities. I stand with every member of this House in condemning the acts of those who were involved—those who planned it, sponsored it and financed it—and send a message of solidarity to the people of France and Mali, and also to the people of Syria and the surrounding countries, who are suffering because of these acts of terrorism.

The bill focuses on the means by which a person's citizenship can be renounced or revoked. There are three important ways. There is renunciation by conduct, which applies to a dual citizen, who would renounce their citizenship when they undertake 'conduct inconsistent with allegiance to Australia'. This is defined. The types of conduct covered by this provision are taken from the Criminal Code or existing criminal acts in the law. This is the section that has been subject to quite some conversation, particularly amongst legal scholars, and I will return to this in a moment.

The bill also provides for renunciation of citizenship due to 'fighting for, or being in the service of, a declared terrorist organisation'. For the purpose of this section the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection will make a declaration of the terrorist organisation in question. This will be a subset of the existing list of declared organisations under the Criminal Code.

There is a third provision, which is renunciation due to conviction for a terrorism-related offence. Again, the list of offences, which are outlined in the explanatory memorandum, are all existing offences taken from the Commonwealth Crimes Act and the Criminal Code.

There is complete consensus across the chamber that those who, through their actions, repudiate that bond of citizenship, who desecrate the values we all hold near and dear, have indeed rejected citizenship, and there should be a process for withdrawing their rights and obligations in Australian law. In fact, there should be a process for withdrawing their citizenship, where it does not leave these people stateless.

The question—in fact the only question that remains, in my mind—is which branch of government should perform this function. The founders of the Constitution had a very clear view of this. They believed that there needed to be a clear separation on the one hand between the powers of the parliament—the legislative and executive branches of government—and those of the judiciary. It was for those reasons that the powers and responsibilities of these two branches of government were separated in chapter 2 and chapter 3 of the Constitution. Indeed, for many centuries the separation, particularly between the executive and judicial arms of parliament, has been seen as a bulwark against tyranny. The reason for this was explained very ably by Justice Jacobs in R v Quinn; Ex parte Consolidated Foods Corporation, where he wrote:

The historical approach to … judicial power is based upon the recognition that we have inherited and were intended by our Constitution to live under a system of law and government which has traditionally protected the rights of persons by ensuring that those rights are determined by a judiciary independent of the parliament and the executive. But the rights referred to in such an enunciation are the basic rights which traditionally … are judged by that independent judiciary which is the bulwark of freedom.

This is no small academic issue. We in this place and elsewhere know that the law expands by both analogy and example, so we need to be very, very cautious in this place about the powers that we purport to give to ourselves, to the executive and to particular ministers within the executive. There has been some concern voiced by members on this side of the House, Labor members, that the provisions of this bill extend beyond the powers which have been granted by the Constitution to the executive branch of the government. Indeed, that was considered by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

We have asked on several occasions that the Attorney-General furnish the Labor opposition with a copy of the advice from the Solicitor-General which the Attorney-General says exists and which the Attorney-General suggests provides advice to the Commonwealth that this legislation is constitutionally valid. We have asked on many occasions for this advice to be provided to the Labor opposition and it has not been forthcoming. The best that the Attorney-General could do was assert the advice existed and that the legislation was on all fours. We say that that is not good enough. It places a cloud over these particular provisions within this bill.

When the joint committee turned its mind to these provisions, it looked to similar provisions that exist in other jurisdictions. It looked at similar jurisdictions, those that we traditionally like to compare ourselves to. It looked to Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States and France. It is true that both the United Kingdom and France purport to give their minister or the executive within their governments the power to revoke citizenship from dual nationals for analogous reasons to those before the House today.

It is also true that there are similar provisions within the Canadian laws where the minister of citizenship and immigration has a discretion to revoke citizenship if a dual citizen has been convicted of a terrorism offence, high treason, treason or spying with particular minimum sentences. It is also true that in Canada the minister can ask the federal court to make a declaration that a person has served as a member of an armed force et cetera. What is important about this example is that the declaration is made by an independent judicial officer and not by the minister.

Such is also the case for our friends across the ocean in New Zealand. The New Zealand laws have been cited in this debate has an example for us. If you look at the New Zealand laws carefully you will see that there is also a judicial step whereby a minister or somebody acting on the instruction of the minister may serve a notice of intention to deprive to a so affected citizen and that person has 28 days to appeal to the high court for a declaration that there are insufficient grounds to justify that deprivation. So, again, in this case you can see that there is an example of a judicial step. So too is the case in the United States and many other countries I have looked at.

I repeat again that these are not small or academic issues. They are important issues which have been determined by the High Court, legal scholars and politicians for decades to be an important principle of law, protecting both the parliament and the people of this country, ensuring that we are continuously governed by the rule of law.

So we have some concerns. I have some concerns about these provisions in the bill. I would not be at all surprised if they were subject to a constitutional challenge and if that constitutional challenge was successful. Let me make it plainly clear: my concerns about these provisions are not directed at the objective of removing citizenship from a dual citizen who has acted on behalf of a terrorist organisation in the ways prescribed by the legislation. I support the government in that objective. These people have acted in a way that puts them at odds with the Australian people. In the words of the explanatory memorandum, they have severed the bond which unites us all. I believe that there should be a mechanism which enables a dual citizen to have their Austrian citizenship revoked. But, if we are going to do it, we should do it in a way which is constitutionally sound and constitutionally valid. In my view, it is best done in the way that it has been done in Canada, New Zealand, the United States and many other countries around the world where this power is restrained by a judicial step. With those brief comments and reservations, I commend the legislation to the House.

Nickolas Varvaris (Barton, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the House for the opportunity to speak on this bill today and to add to the comments made by my parliamentary colleagues. The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 is another manifestation of the coalition's commitment to protecting the sovereignty of this country and the safety of its citizens. At the heart of this bill is the importance of a connection to Australia, a commitment to the country's laws and a respect for the mutual obligations which exist between individuals and the state and which are expected to be fulfilled by all Australian citizens.

I have said this before, but I am happy to elaborate once again. The inauguration of the Australian Citizenship Act in 1949 was a key marker of our development as a fully fledged independent nation accepting migrants on its own terms. Since Federation we have evolved from having a restricted immigration policy to having one of regulation, accepting individuals from other nations who wish to bring skills and contribute to Australia, accepting those seeking refuge from persecution and taking in those seeking humanitarian assistance.

Citizenship is a tool by which we invite individuals from all over the world to join our national story and to contribute to our shared community life. For that reason, it should be treasured, celebrated and upheld. The Australian legacy is that of shared generosity, of helping our mates and of lending a hand to those who need it most. Over the years our community's social fabric has been one of cultural diversity and it is through that diversity that our community has strengthened its bonds. Within that diversity, a common thread that unites us all in our citizenship is a commitment to Australian values such as mateship, egalitarianism and a fair go for all.

I know that the issue of citizenship is one that my electorate of Barton feels strongly about. Citizenship has benefited many Barton residents, with 48.3 per cent of people in my electorate being born outside Australia. Barton residents are often first-, second- or third-generation migrants, and they have all embraced the Australian way of life in their path to citizenship. Those in my electorate who have attained Australian citizenship after having been born overseas are always expressing to me the high value they place on Australia's decision to bring them into the fold of our community. None take their citizenship lightly. They all understand their obligations as citizens, express devotion to our country, and are willing to continue to build this nation and become proud members of a strong and diverse society. The government's role expected by our citizens is to protect citizens from harm and ensure they remain safe from terror and safe from those who have little regard for human life. The coalition's highest priority is to keep the Australian community safe from those who would seek to do us harm. Australians have a right to expect protection from domestic threats of harm and from international threats to our security. Sadly, the threat of terrorism facing our nation is not a figment of imagination; it is real, it is serious and it will worsen unless action is taken.

The Review of Australia's counter-terrorism machinery earlier this year confirmed that the threat of terrorism in Australia is rising. Specifically, the number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas is increasing, the number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremists is increasing and the number of potential terrorists is rising. Our security agencies are currently managing over 400 high-priority counter-terrorism investigations, which has more than doubled in the last 1½ years. Since September last year, 26 people have been charged as a result of the 10 counter-terrorism operations undertaken, which is more than one-third of all terrorism charges since 2001. Approximately 110 Australians are currently fighting with or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. A further 190 people in Australia are providing support to individuals and groups in the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts through financing and recruitment, or are seeking to travel to those conflicts.

The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 will amend the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to ensure that dual nationals who fight for or who are in the service of a terrorist group, or who engage in terrorism-related conduct will automatically lose their Australian citizenship. Citizenship is to be respected, not taken for granted. This applies to all Australians. Since the commencement of the Nationality and Citizenship Act in 1949, there have been provisions for the automatic loss of citizenship in cases where a dual citizen serves in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. Our laws must be updated to reflect current threats to our country and values through terrorism-related activity. Those found to be betraying their allegiance to this country by engaging in terrorism and related conduct will have their Australian citizenship overturned. The bill will also ensure that dual nationals who are convicted of specified terrorism and related offences lose the privileges of Australian citizenship. Protecting our national security and the right to safety for our citizens are our highest priorities. They should be the highest priorities of all governments. This is not about compromising individual rights, it is not about rendering an individual stateless but it is about reinforcing the notion that those who betray our state will face the full extent of the law. This is an appropriate response given the evolution of global terrorism. Furthermore, an individual who has lost his or her citizenship will be able to seek judicial review of the facts.

The measures in this bill operate automatically at the time a person engages in the specified conduct or is convicted. There are three new ways in which a dual national can lose their citizenship. The first is through conduct such as engaging in terrorist threat activities, engaging in a terrorist act, providing or receiving terrorist training, directing activities of a terrorist organisation, recruiting for a terrorist organisation, financing terrorism, financing a terrorist, or engaging in foreign incursion or recruitment. The second is through fighting for a declared terrorist organisation. This bill expands the scope of the existing section to provide for the automatic cessation of citizenship if a person who is also a citizen of another country is overseas and fighting on behalf of, or in the service of, a declared terrorist organisation. The declared terrorist organisation will be determined by the Attorney-General under the Criminal Code. The third way is through conviction for terrorism and related offences. Proposed new section 35A provides that a person automatically ceases to be an Australian citizen if they are convicted of a specified terrorism or related offence.

I want to take this opportunity to pre-empt any concerns fellow Australians may have on two important fronts. Firstly, a child will not automatically lose their citizenship because of the actions of his or her parents. However, an individual under the age of 18 can lose their citizenship under the bill's provisions if they have engaged in acts of terrorism, as clarified previously. The minister will have the discretion to determine whether an individual loses citizenship or not. The minister will also have the discretion to exempt any individual in public interest cases. In the case that an individual has his or her citizenship revoked, the person, if they are in Australia at the time, would be returned to the country of their other nationality or citizenship. This would be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, similar to cases of people who have had their visas cancelled.

These changes are part of a multifaceted approach to countering the threat of terror posed by an increasing number of foreign fighters, sympathisers and supporters of extremists and potential terrorists. The threat is simply too serious to ignore. As I mentioned previously, attaining citizenship through birthright or acquisition carries reciprocal obligations. Australian citizenship confers great benefits but, equally, rights and obligations. We have fair expectations of our citizens to defend our shared values, which will stand us in good stead for as long as we embrace them. The majority of Australians never need to be reminded of this. Most citizens would never dream of betraying a country that has bestowed them with hope, opportunity and reward. But, for the small percentage who do, it is not acceptable to ignore the potential threat to human life that they pose.

We do not need to think far back or look too far to realise how dangerous some terror groups have become—notably Daesh and ISIS, who are systematically displacing millions of people in the Middle East, notably Syria. It is unthinkable to imagine Australians who are dual citizens of these nations, travelling abroad and fighting amongst them, completely against our shared values of democracy and peace. The alarming rate at which young dual nationals are fleeing to join terrorist organisations is horrifying, and, as a responsible government, we cannot sit back and do nothing. If and when they return, they cannot simply glide back into this country, slip through Customs and resume life like everyone else. It is very unlikely that they are able to resume civilian life and demonstrate loyalty to Australia if they have witnessed the horror of, and actively participated in, the torture, killing and persecution of so many innocent people. Many Australians do not feel these individuals have the right to resume life here. I know many Barton residents have telephoned, emailed and written letters to me expressing their disgust that terrorists and sympathisers alike should be allowed to remain in Australian society without punishment, especially if they deploy similar acts on our shores.

There is a real difference between breaking social codes of conduct and engaging in an act of terror. The gravity of the latter cannot be underestimated. As an Australian citizen, the first allegiance is always to this country. The Allegiance to Australia Bill is an expansion of the circumstances in which Australian citizenship may be lost. However, this has been done at a crucial time, when dealing with terror organisations which completely oppose democratic values and respect for human life. It is fundamental that our citizens remain connected and loyal to Australia. Citizenship is not an aspiration of being part of the Australian community; it recognises that the applicant is already part of that shared life, with reciprocal obligations and respect for this country's laws. The new powers in this bill are a necessary and appropriate response to the evolution of the terrorist threat. I commend the bill to the House.

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

I too rise to speak on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill, which seeks to update our current citizenship laws in the face of home-grown terrorism. I do not think that anyone in this chamber takes much pride in having to be part of changing the laws to reflect this. The issue about home-grown terrorism, Deputy Speaker, as you and everyone else are aware, is that it is something that is a recent development not only in this country but around the globe. The legislation which is before us forms part of a suite of national security measures designed to address the issue of home-grown terrorism.

In fact, when you think about it, the word 'terrorism' is becoming all too familiar following: the escalating security crisis in Iraq and Syria; what we see occurring now in the Middle East; the ongoing terrorist threat; but also the increasing prospect of terrorism in Australia and countries that share our beliefs, particularly when it comes to freedom and liberty. It has been only nine days since a wave of ISIS attacks occurred in Paris, which killed 130 people. Clearly, our thoughts and prayers are with the people of France, who are coming to terms with that tragedy on their soil. Brussels are currently in their highest state of terror alert as they search for a fugitive that was involved in the Paris atrocity. Brussel's public transport and their schools—all those things that we would normally take for granted—have for the last three days been closed. Another tragedy unfolded in Mali, where two gunmen held up 170 hostages at a luxury hotel. The siege lasted for more than seven hours and resulted in 19 people being killed. Only a few weeks ago, we saw the downing of a Russian airliner. We saw the atrocities of the bombings that occurred in Lebanon, where 40 people were killed. This is not something that is peculiar to Australia as we go about our business addressing terrorism; this is now very much a worldwide occurrence.

Bear in mind that since last September, we have seen three home-grown terrorist attacks inspired by ISIS on Australian soil: the attempted stabbing of two police officers in Melbourne in September last year, the Martin Place siege in December of last year, and the fatal shooting of a New South Wales police employee in Parramatta only recently. Following these events, Australian authorities have also disrupted six planned attacks and arrested more than 30 people for their involvement in the conspiracies, during counter-terrorism operations around Australia. These occurrences have prompted a review of many of our laws, to safeguard the Australian way of life and to ensure the integrity of our national security as we guard against terrorism-related activities.

The Australian Citizenship Act has not been updated since, effectively, it was first written in 1948. Under existing provisions, a person's citizenship automatically ceases if they served in the military of a nation at war with Australia. Subject to the discretion of the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, the minister may also revoke Australian citizenship if a person is found to have procured their citizenship through fraud, or if they are convicted of serious offences which occurred before the person became an Australian citizen. However, given the evolving nature of the threat of terrorism and violent extremism, the government, in June of this year, introduced amendments to the Australian Citizenship Act, which propose to revoke the citizenship of dual nationals who have engaged in acts of terrorism.

I appreciate that, following the announcement of these amendments, there has been considerable consternation amongst many Australians that this bill could somehow render dual citizens lesser Australians. That is clearly not the case and never was the position in the negotiations that occurred around amendments to the Citizenship Act. Dual citizens are just as Australian as anybody else, and it is important to note that nothing has been put before this parliament that does anything to erode that fundamental principle. This has always been the approach adopted by Labor in the consideration of this legislation, right from the start.

On 4 September, the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security released their detailed report. That report detailed 27 recommendations relating to the government's amendments to the bill. It is important to note that those recommendations were unanimous. This was clearly a bipartisan report. It was certainly designed to improve the bill. In doing so, it looked at providing stringent safeguards relating to situations where dual citizenship holders could have their Australian citizenship removed.

Effectively, under the recommendations of the committee, dual citizens can only have their citizenship stripped if, firstly, they are convicted of a terrorist offence in Australia; secondly, they are currently overseas engaging in terrorist activities; or, thirdly, they are collaborating with a terrorist organisation. That was pretty specifically laid down by the committee, and the government has accepted those recommendations. These amendments, if passed, will set a very high bar. They will reduce the scope of the legislation to a much narrower set of circumstances and will give a much more focused approach in addressing the real difficulties, as we see them, of home-grown terrorism.

The foreign fighter phenomenon, in particular, as I said earlier, has taken many in the West, not just here in Australia, by surprise, with the number of people travelling to the Middle East to participate in and fight alongside organisations such as ISIS in their endeavours in Syria and Iraq. As I understand it, it is reported that, as of June this year, 120 Australians are currently fighting with terrorist organisations overseas and 160 Australians are supporting organisations through financing or recruitment from this country. According to an ASIO report to the parliament, around 30 Australians have returned from fighting in Syria and Iraq, 19 of whom have been subsequently involved in terrorist plotting and eight of whom have subsequently been convicted of terrorism offences. The proportion of foreign fighters who have gone on to be convicted of terrorism related offences in Australia has been surprisingly higher than many of the pre-ISIL averages across other Western nations. Therefore, one of the key concerns of these amendments also relates to the potential threat that these foreign fighters pose to domestic security upon their return.

However, in line with the committee's recommendations, this does not mean that Australians will lose their citizenship simply because of untested suspicions or concerns relating to their conduct. Citizenship is one of our most fundamental rights and we do not support any measure that would erode or undermine this significant principle. Therefore, it is significant to emphasise that a person who is found to have been convicted of a terrorist offence, is engaging in overseas conflict or is found by the courts to be collaborating with a terrorist organisation will have the right to appeal any determination by the minister to have their citizenship revoked. The minister's determination of that would be a matter that could be tested at law. Therefore, an individual's rights are secured, provided they believe they are sufficiently innocent of the criteria of either participating in, associating with or collaborating with terrorist organisations. This is an important safeguard, given that we believe this is a fundamental right for all citizens, adhering to our notion of freedoms and human rights.

I understand that a number of questions have also been raised during discussions with the government regarding the views of various legal experts of the constitutionality of certain aspects of the bill. We have raised those matters with the government on many occasions and I note from the shadow Attorney-General that the committee has been provided with a letter from the Attorney-General himself assuring it of the bill's constitutionality. I know that is clearly not a legal advice, and it is not something that you would roll up to court with to justify your position, but I assume that Senator Brandis has appropriate legal authority to provide that correspondence. I would like to emphasise that the issue of constitutionality is an issue for the government. At the end of the day, it is for the government to ensure that the legislation put before this parliament is constitutional.

Labor takes the issue of our national security very seriously. We also take seriously the question of ensuring that whatever legislation passes this parliament will never create two classes of Australian citizens. Having said that, Labor supports the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, as the recommendations, we believe, certainly improve the bill. We note the government has also accepted those 27 unanimous recommendations of the committee. We believe that the bill, embracing those recommendations, does not represent a significant change to the principles underpinning our country's citizenship laws but will simply bring the laws up to date so that those who seek to do our nation harm can no longer be considered to have an allegiance to it. I support the bill.

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in very strong support of the measures contained in the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015. I think every Australian who reads the newspapers or listens to the news knows that the threat of terrorism around the world is ever increasing. Nothing has made that more profoundly clear than the events nine days ago in France which had an impact on us all. And we know that Brussels is on its highest terrorist alert. I know from the emails, calls and personal approaches I have had from my constituents—and it would be the same for many if not all members in this House—that Australians support a very strong approach to the threat of terrorism in Australia and, like this government, they take our national security very seriously.

The review of Australia's counter-terrorism machinery found that the terrorism threat in Australia is rising—specifically, the number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas is increasing, the number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremists is increasing and the number of potential terrorists is rising. I read that ISIL has almost 40,000 online operatives, so it is certainly not surprising that the threat level is increasing.

Our security agencies are currently managing over 400 high priority counter-terrorism investigations. That number has doubled since early 2014. Since September last year, when the national terrorism public alert level was raised to high, 26 people in this country have been charged as a result of 10 counter-terrorism operations. That is more than one-third of all terrorism related charges since 2001. That shows you the increase and why we need to take this issue seriously in Australia. Around 110 Australians are currently fighting or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq, and about 190 people in Australia are providing support to individuals and groups in the Syria and Iraq conflicts through financing and recruitment or seeking to travel.

The government announced earlier this year that it would develop amendments to the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to provide for the removal of Australian citizenship in the case of dual nationals engaging in terrorism related combat—and rightly so. Supporting and engaging in terrorist activities against Australia's interests is a breach of a person's commitment and allegiance to our country, Australia. Australian citizenship is a bond that should unite all citizens. Citizenship should be respected and not taken for granted.

As I was told repeatedly when I was doorknocking in 2007, especially by those who were seeking at some point in the future to become Australian citizens, they believe very strongly that it is a privilege to be a citizen of Australia, not a right. I agree with them. However, that privilege is being continually undermined by those who hold it cheaply and those who actively seek to use the laws of this land against our own people and our own communities. We need to act. As the bill states, parliament recognises that Australian citizenship is a common bond involving reciprocal rights and obligations and that citizens may through certain conduct incompatible with the shared values of the Australian community demonstrate that they have severed that bond and repudiated their allegiance to Australia. They do this themselves. This is something they choose—to sever the bond and repudiate their allegiance to Australia.

The new powers in the bill are certainly necessary and an appropriate response to what has been an evolution in the terrorist threat. Looking at the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948, there have been provisions for the automatic loss of citizenship in cases where dual citizens serve in armed forces in a country at war with Australia. It is important that our laws are updated to reflect current threats to our country and our values through terrorism related activity.

My father was a migrant to this country back in the 1920s. All of his family came to Australia because it offered them an opportunity that they really respected. That is exactly what we need from people who come to this country. His family came here because they could see that this country offered them an amazing opportunity. In those early days it was the simple opportunity to work hard, feed their family, put a roof over their head and eventually, if they worked really hard and saved their money, build a small family business. To the migrants this was indeed a land of opportunity, and the privileges that went with citizenship were held in great esteem. It is interesting that so often these are the people who react so strongly when someone takes Australian citizenship for granted and engages in terrorist acts. It is these people who take this very, very personally. They see the opportunity Australia has given them and their families and they have no time for those who seek to undermine that citizenship privilege.

A person's citizenship can also be revoked on the basis of a conviction for immigration or citizenship fraud or for a serious offence—a sentence of 12 months or more—committed prior to the granting of citizenship. Sixteen people have lost their citizenship this way since 1949. This bill amends the act and has a range of measures attached. It applies to a person who is a dual national, regardless of how that person became an Australian citizen, including a person who became an Australian citizen upon birth.

Section 33AA provides that a person who is a 'national or citizen of a country other than Australia renounces their Australian citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in' specified conduct. The relevant conduct is spelled out:

(a) engaging in international terrorist activities using explosive or lethal devices;

(b) engaging in a terrorist act;

(c) providing or receiving training connected with preparation for, engagement in, or assistance in a terrorist act;

(d) directing the activities of a terrorist organisation;

(e) recruiting for a terrorist organisation;

(f) financing terrorism;

(g) financing a terrorist;

(h) engaging in foreign incursions and recruitment.

It covers a wide range of potential terrorist activities.

The government amendments to the bill provide that the conduct provisions are limited to individuals who have engaged in relevant conduct offshore or in relevant conduct onshore and left Australia before being charged and brought to trial in respect of that conduct. The amended bill provides that the conduct provisions only apply if the conduct is engaged in with specified intentions, such as the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause; with the intention of supporting, promoting or engaging in a hostile activity in another country; or on the instructions of a declared terrorist organisation.

Existing laws provide for the automatic loss of citizenship where a person serves in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. This came into force in 1949. The bill expands this section to provide for automatic cessation of citizenship if a person is also a citizen of another country—a dual citizen—is overseas and fights for or is in the service of a declared terrorist organisation. A declared terrorist organisation will be a subset of those listed for the purposes of terrorist offences under the Criminal Code.

Australians expect us to take very serious measures. The outpouring we have seen from Australians for others around the world means that the continuous measures the government is taking to strengthen our national security and deal with this ongoing issue of terrorism are very rightly and strongly based and supported. The amended bill provides that the minister, by legislative instrument, may declare a terrorist organisation where the organisation is directly or indirectly engaged in preparing, planning, assisting or fostering terrorism or advocates a terrorist act. It provides for an organisation that is opposed to Australia or Australia's interests, values, democratic beliefs, rights or liberties. This is what is covered when someone participates in a citizenship service. All of us in this place have been along to numerous citizenship ceremonies. They are the words of someone who seeks to become an Australian citizen, as part of their pledge, as part of the rights, responsibilities, obligations and opportunities that go with being an Australian citizen.

I was a delegate for the United Nations, to observe the elections in Cambodia, some years ago. I saw a group of people who had not had the right to vote. So many others had been killed by the Pol Pot regime. Those people were so excited. They had to put a finger in indelible ink to prove that they had only voted once. For the older people who had lived their lives through that time there was excitement on their faces. They rushed up to us outside those polling booths, in great excitement, to show us the finger that had been dipped in indelible ink. It proved that they had the right to vote and that they had done so. That is what citizenship is as well. It gives you the right to participate. How seriously we need to take that right, and it is a responsibility that has obligations.

I strongly support the measures contained in this bill. I just wanted to reiterate that the people who feel particularly strongly about measures like this and those that protect our Australian values and way of life are often those who have come to this country looking and knowing that this country would nurture and support them in the same way that they would work with and for this country for the betterment of all of us. On that basis, I commend the bill to the House.

Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is controversial legislation. The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 extends the conditions by which dual citizens may have their Australian citizenship cancelled. It is a very important issue. Citizenship defines who we are. We are Australians, and that defines everything about our rights and liberties and who we are as people. Since 1948, the Australian parliament has determined the conditions on which citizenship can be bestowed upon certain people, the rights and privileges associated with that and the conditions upon which that citizenship can be revoked, and, since that time, that particular law that bestows that citizenship and outlines the conditions under which it can be revoked have not been changed.

In providing a person with Australian citizenship, certain rights are conferred. Some of them are constitutional—the right to trial by jury; the right to freedom of religion. Some of them are implied in the Constitution—the right to political expression or freedom of speech and so on. But citizenship is also a two-way street. You are conferred with rights but you have certain obligations as well. You have to respect the rights and values of Australia enshrined in our Constitution, and our laws you must uphold and obey.

I have considered this issue quite thoroughly. You are trying to strike the appropriate balance between protecting the rights and liberties of citizens and putting in place the necessary measures to deter and to stop people from undertaking terrorist acts that would harm and seek to destroy the Australian way of life. I want to thank those in my community who have written to me about this issue. I have received some correspondence from people, and they outline valid concerns. The concerns that people have outlined in respect of the constitutionality of this bill are legitimate. It is going back over a history of Australian constitutional interpretation that does specify that such rights and privileges should not be removed by the executive level of government in this country but by the judiciary. That is clearly stated in our nation's Constitution. So I thank those who have written to me about this.

I also congratulate and thank the Labor members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security who—through their thorough investigation of this bill and, indeed, their outlining of some of the problems of the original bill—have managed to secure 27 amendments to the bill which really inject a bit of common sense into what the government was proposing. There is no doubt that the original manifestation of this bill would have been unconstitutional and it would have fallen over at the first case that was brought before the High Court. That still may be the case. We do not know that, because the Attorney-General refuses to release the legal advice upon which the bill is founded. So that still may be the case. But the amendments that Labor members have put forward, and which have been accepted by government members on the committee and then by the government, do ensure that a bit of common sense has been injected into this bill. So that process was very important.

One of the first acts of the shadow Attorney-General was to ask the Attorney-General, George Brandis, to present the Solicitor-General's legal advice—to disclose to the Australian people the advice upon which the government had acted which demonstrates that this bill is constitutional. After all, the worst case scenario for the government could be to introduce this new law, to have it passed by the Australian parliament, and then for it to fall over at its first challenge in the High Court. So we sought the advice that the government had acted upon. Unfortunately, that advice was not forthcoming. The Attorney-General did provide a letter providing assurances that the bill is constitutional, but pardon us if we take those assurances with a grain of salt, given the Attorney-General's performance on a number of legal issues in the past. So, in the wake of that, we referred the bill to the joint committee on security and intelligence, and they conducted an inquiry, and, as I said, there have been 27 recommendations that have strengthened this bill.

I want to make it very, very clear: I am horrified, like most Australians, by the acts of terrorist organisations and terrorists, not only in Australia but elsewhere throughout the world. In particular, in the wake of what has occurred in France and in Mali over the course of the last week, we do need to ensure that our security, intelligence and police agencies have the necessary and appropriate powers to combat this and to protect Australian citizens. This is something that is acutely known by the community that I represent. We lost more members as a result of the Bali bombings some 11 years ago than probably any other community in the country. It is something that has hit home in our area.

So we need to make sure that dual nationals who do undertake serious terrorist offences, either overseas or in Australia, do lose their Australian citizenship because, in doing so, you sever the bond that you have with the rest of Australia. You take yourself outside of the realms of our Constitution, our laws and our way of life. And, for that, you deserve to have your citizenship cancelled. But, in doing so, I want to make sure, by the same token, that, if a court or a minister acts, that act is constitutional. That has been the basis upon which I and the Labor members of this parliament have approached this legislation, because the original version of this legislation, we believe, would not have passed that test. So the committee went on to make 27 recommendations, which Labor supports, which substantially improve this bill that has been put forward by the government.

This legislation has not been updated since 1948 when it was first enacted, and I do feel that the time has come to update this act in order to equip our security forces and intelligence officers to better combat the threat that is posed by non-state actors such as Daesh, Jemaah Islamiah and other terrorist organisations. Citizenship is one of our most fundamental rights, and I will not support any moves that undermine that right; nor will I or other Labor members tolerate any changes that sever or weaken the status of our country's many dual nationals.

As a result of the 27 recommendations made by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, there will essentially be three scenarios covered by three new provisions which will result in dual citizens losing their citizenship as a result of terrorist related activity. Those scenarios are: a dual national who is convicted of a terrorist offence in Australia, or a dual national currently overseas engaging in terrorist activities or collaborating with a declared terrorist organisation like ISIS, and renunciation by conduct. The bill actually specifies that renunciation by conduct as dual citizens who undertake conduct inconsistent with their allegiance to Australia, as defined in the bill. The types of conduct covered by this provision are taken from the Criminal Code and all existing criminal acts and law. This is a section that has been subject to scrutiny and to the issue of constitutionality, but the protections put in place as a result of the 27 recommendations do strike a much fairer balance. They do go to that issue of protecting rights and privileges whilst deterring terrorism but making sure that the decision is constitutional.

The provisions relating to those convicted of a terrorist related offence will be amended such that the list of offences to which this section relates will be reduced as a result of that inquiry. For instance, destruction of Commonwealth property is no longer included as an offence. We are now only talking about serious criminal offences that would constitute grounds for conviction for an offence and trigger the minister's discretion on dual citizens. The provisions relating to conduct inconsistent with allegiance to Australia will also be amended such that they will only apply to dual citizens who have engaged in the conduct offshore or who are engaged in the conduct onshore and are now located offshore—that is, the provision is aimed at providing national security agencies with another tool that would prevent these people returning to Australia if they have been involved in terrorist related conduct.

The bill will also outline a set of criteria for the minister to consider before declaring a terrorist organisation for the purposes of the act. The declaration of the organisations will also be a disallowable instrument. The term 'in service of' will be clarified for the purposes of section 35. This will ensure it is clear that acts done under duress or unintentionally—for example, a parent covering living expenses of a radicalised teenager—would not be covered by the act. All provisions will only apply in the event that the minister receives an adverse security assessment in relation to the dual citizen. The minister will be required to provide, or make reasonable attempts to provide, the dual citizen with notice of the revocation, unless that notification would compromise ongoing operations or national security. The decision not to provide must be reviewed every six months thereafter. Revocation of a person's citizenship will not affect the citizenship of other family members, including children in particular. That is a very important amendment that has been secured. A person will have the right to appeal the loss or revocation of their citizenship to the Federal Court. It is important that there is that level of judicial review of the ministerial decision.

In total, these amendments significantly narrow the scope of the bill and represent a far more targeted approach to what was originally proposed by the government. In my view, the amendments better balance the rights of Australian citizens as conferred by this parliament through legislation, enshrined in our Constitution and implied by the courts over many years. Also, rights and protections are ensured for our security intelligence agencies and our police to ensure that they have the necessary tools and the necessary penalties to punish people and deter people from engaging in these insidious acts.

We take terrorism and this issue of citizenship very seriously—extremely seriously. That is why Labor has provided quite a great deal of scrutiny of these laws. We are talking about one of the most fundamental rights that defines people: citizenship. We should not take lightly any bill which seeks to expand the removal of that citizenship. That is the approach that we have taken with this bill, but, in doing so, we have made sure that, in combating the rise of terrorism and terrorist organisations throughout the world, Australia is playing its part and, importantly, protecting Australian citizens. On that basis, I am happy to commend this bill to the House.

Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the member for Herbert—and I am sure that I speak for most of us in this place—one of the proudest moments I have each month in the city of Townsville is when I attend the citizenship ceremonies conducted by my local Townsville City Council. To stand up there and to read out the letter that Minister Dutton has brought for everyone before they make the oath of allegiance, or whatever we call it, is truly a wonderful thing. My mayor, Jenny Hill, is the daughter of migrants. She is a first-generation Australian. She tells people undertaking the ceremony that she was exactly where they were, and she talks of the pride she felt as her parents became citizens of this great country. To stand there and see these different nationalities come together and become Australian citizens is a truly wonderful moment, each and every month. To hear them recite those words—'From this time forward, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey'—is what this legislation is all about.

The problem we have today is that some people do not take those words seriously when reciting them. We have some people who use our system, our citizenship, our social security system, our good intentions and our trust to foster a hate of our country and our way of life. With a rising number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas and supporting and financing them in Australia, this legislation provides for dual citizens to have their Australian citizenship removed due to their participation in terrorism related activities and outlines the circumstances under which that might happen. What we are saying is: if you take out Australian citizenship and then go and fight for our enemy against us, then we will take Australian citizenship from you. We do not want you back. It is that simple.

What this is not about is an attack on the cultures, textures, flavours and colours that immigrants bring to our country. We are a better country because of the rich heritage of other nations coming here and sharing their home country's values and cultures with us. What this is not about is forcing people to become Australian. A lot of people in Townsville say, 'They should become Australian.' I always say that if, for whatever reason, I had to move to another country and take up citizenship of that country I would respect and love my new country but would never stop loving Australia or the fact that Australia made me the man I am today. I would still tune into the first session of the Boxing Day tests. I would still stop and give thanks every Anzac Day and Remembrance Day. I would still have a lamb roast on Australia Day, and I would still be a Cowboys supporter. These things would not stop me from being a productive and respectful citizen of my new country. So it should be with people coming to Australia from other countries: bring all the things you love, and keep them; be proud of them; celebrate and commemorate them. But you have to be a productive and respectful member of our country. So, when taking out Australian citizenship, new citizens will bring their culture with them but must be prepared to obey the laws of Australia.

Why do we need to change? The Review of Australia's counter-terrorism machinery found that the terrorist threat in Australia is rising. Specifically, the number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas is increasing and the number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremists is increasing. So, we have some serious issues, and we have to take some serious matters into our hands. Our security agencies—and I think we should give a little bit of thanks to the people who do these things, the Border Force people and our security agencies, who do a fantastic job in keeping us safe—are currently managing over 400 high-profile counter-terrorism investigations. This number has more than doubled since early 2014.

Since September last year, when the National Terrorism Public Alert level was raised to high, 26 people have been charged as a result of 10 counter-terrorism operations. Around 110 Australians are currently fighting or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. And about 190 people in Australia are providing support to individuals and groups in the Syria-Iraq conflicts through financing and recruitment or are seeking to travel. Those are big numbers, but when you consider how many people come here every year by way of humanitarian refugee programs and skilled migration, we are talking about a very small minority of people here.

Citizenship should be respected and not taken for granted. I think that is the genesis of this whole debate. As the bill states:

Parliament recognises that Australian citizenship is a common bond, involving reciprocal rights and obligations, and that citizens may, through certain conduct incompatible with the shared values of the Australian community, demonstrate that they have severed that bond and repudiated their allegiance to Australia.

The new powers in the bill are a necessary and appropriate response to the evolution of the terrorist threat. This bill amends the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to insert a 'purpose clause' setting out the fundamental principles upon which the amendments are based; to outline circumstances in which a dual citizen ceases to be an Australian citizen through their engagement in terrorism related activities; to outline circumstances in which the minister may exempt a person from the operation of the bill to provide for reporting on and monitoring the operation of the arrangements in the bill; to provide for the protection of sensitive or prejudicial information in relation to that reporting and monitoring; and related matters.

The bill applies to a person who is a dual national, regardless of how the person became an Australian citizen, including a person who became an Australian citizen upon birth. The bill was referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security on 24 June 2015 for inquiry and report. The committee tabled its report on Friday 4 September 2015. And I must make special mention of the chair of that committee, Dan Tehan, the member for Wannon, who did a fantastic job in making sure that we got a good report out of that.

So, what are the actual details here? Section 33AA provides that a person who is a national or citizen of a country other than Australia renounces their Australian citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in specified conduct. The relevant conduct includes engaging in international terrorist activities using explosive or lethal devices; engaging in a terrorist act; providing or receiving training connected with preparation for, engagement in, or assistance in a terrorist act; directing the activities of a terrorist organisation; recruiting for a terrorist organisation; financing terrorism; financing a terrorist; and engaging in foreign incursions and recruitment.

The government amendments to the bill provide that the conduct provisions are limited to individuals who have engaged in relevant conduct offshore; or engaged in relevant conduct onshore and left Australia before being charged and brought to trial in respect of that conduct. The amended bill provides that the conduct provisions apply only if the conduct is engaged in with specific intentions, such as the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause; with the intention of supporting, promoting or engaging in a hostile activity in another country; or on the instructions of a declared terrorist organisation. We are not talking about a million people here; we are talking about a very small number of people.

Element two of this bill goes to the provisions for fighting for or being in the service of a declared terrorist organisation. The law has provided for the automatic loss of citizenship where a person serves in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia since it came into force in 1949. This bill expands the section to provide for automatic cessation of citizenship if a person is also a citizen of another country, is overseas and fights for or is in the service of a declared terrorist organisation. The provisions in relation to being 'in the service of a declared terrorist organisation' do not apply to acts that are unintentional, under duress, or for the purposes of independent humanitarian assistance. Again, we are talking about shrinking down the number of people who are actually exposed here.

Element 3 is a conviction for terrorism and related offences. To be considered under this section, a person must be sentenced to at least six years imprisonment or to periods of imprisonment totalling more than six years. This provision relies on a court having determined criminal guilt. The relevant offences include convictions for treason, espionage, terrorism, international terrorist activities and using explosives or lethal devices, treachery, sabotage and foreign incursions and recruitment. The person ceases to be an Australian citizen at the time a determination is made by the minister. The minister must revoke a determination if a conviction is overturned or if the decision to overturn is upheld on appeal, and no further appeal can be made to a court in relation to the decision. So you do have a judicial oversight.

We are a great country made up of people from all over the world. We lay claim to and are rightly proud that we are the single most successful immigrant nation on the face of the planet. That is because we are a classless society; we take the person as we find them. That is the way we want our country to continue. I am a firm believer in a strong immigration policy, both skilled migration and humanitarian immigration. I am a firm believer that we are a better country for having people from other parts of the world here. In this country, you are given every chance to put in, to have a go, to get ahead and to do better for your children and your family. If you repudiate that helping hand, if you take up arms against us, we do not want you here and we ask, as my Dad always says, that you do not let the door hit you on the backside on the way out.

I support this legislation. I support the work that Minister Dutton is doing in this portfolio. I support my government as we do everything we can to keep our country safe. I thank the members of the PJCIS for all their hard work on this, and these things are not easy. I commend the bill to the House.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When we rise to speak in this debate on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015, given the events over the last few weeks—particularly the events in France, Mali and Lebanon—it gives us cause to think and reflect about what it is to be an Australian and to understand our obligations as citizens of this great country and that with citizenship you have responsibilities. Those responsibilities require you to act in a particular way in understanding your obligations to us, because when you declare your pledge, under the Australian Citizenship Act, it says:

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people,

whose democratic beliefs I share,

whose rights and liberties I respect, and

whose laws I will uphold and obey.

The purpose of this bill is to amend the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to provide for automatic cessation of Australian citizenship, including Australian citizenship by birth, of a person who is also a national citizen of another country, that is, a dual national, where that person renounces their Australian citizenship by engaging in specified conduct inconsistent with their allegiance to Australia, fights for or is in the service of a declared terrorist organisation outside of Australia and is convicted of a specified offence under the Criminal Code or the Crimes Act 1914.

I think it is worthwhile reflecting just for a moment on the history of citizenship in this country. Citizenship has evolved in Australia. At Federation in 1901, 'British subject' was the sole civic status noted in the Australian Constitution. The Australasian Federal Convention of 1897-98 was unable to agree on a definition of the term 'citizen' and wanted to preserve British nationality in Australia. An administrative concept of citizenship arose from the need to distinguish between British subjects who were permanent residents and those who were merely visitors. This was necessary for the Commonwealth to exercise its powers over immigration and deportation.

Motivated principally I think by the nationalism of Arthur Calwell, the Minister for Immigration between 1945 and 1949, this administrative concept was formalised in the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948. In 1958, the act was amended so that naturalisation could only be revoked if obtained by fraud. This prevented a naturalised person being stripped of citizenship and deported. Throughout the 1960s, Australian citizens were still required to declare their nationality as British. The term 'Australian nationality' had no official recognition or meaning until the act was amended in 1969 and renamed the Citizenship Act. This followed a growing sense of nationalism and the declining importance of the British Empire for Australians. I remember well this period because it was a debate around the role of the EEC and Britain's entry into the common agricultural policy, and so the preferential arrangements that existed between Australia and the United Kingdom, in terms of trade, started to change irrevocably. So the closeness of mother England became somewhat more distant.

However, it was not until 1984 that Australian citizens ceased to be British subjects. The Australian Constitution does not grant the Commonwealth parliament an express power to make laws with respect to citizenship. Nonetheless, it has long been accepted that a broad power to pass such laws exists. But, as we know through the discussion of this piece of legislation that is currently before us, the High Court has never precisely delineated the ambit of this power and its constitutional boundaries. There have been a number of commentaries around that particular issue in the public debate and discussion leading up to the passage of this bill.

The minister, when initially introducing the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015, addressed the challenge posed by dual citizens who betray Australia by participating in serious terrorist related activities. But the central emphasis of the bill is the importance of allegiance to Australia in the concept of citizenship. That is fundamental for all of us. The introduction of this bill and the subsequent work, as we have heard, of the members of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, in their final presentation of a unanimous report containing 26 substantive recommendations to improve the bill, shine a light on an area of constitutional law generating much discussion in our community.

Of course, there are many still who believe that the constitutional validity of the proposed changes that we are putting through this parliament today is open to question, but as I understand it we have had written assurances from the Attorney that he believes the amendments we are making today are constitutional. Let it be said that we hope they are. But, if they are not, then we know that there has been a lot of discussion in the broader legal community about the constitutionality or asserted constitutionality of this piece of legislation. If it is proven that is not constitutional at some point because of a challenge to the High Court, then it will be in this government's hands to come up with a response which means that we make the effective changes that we are requiring to be made here today and ensure they are constitutionally valid. I am not a lawyer, let alone a constitutional lawyer, so I would not argue that I have any particular expertise. But I have been reading the commentary of many eminent jurists around this country, and it is clear there is a matter of grave contention still to be debated.

We do live in a wonderful place and it is important that we secure this country from the ravages of sectarian violence and terrorism that are so evident as we speak. I am mindful in having this discussion that people like me in the late 1960s and 1970s were involved in supporting organisations like the African National Congress, raising money for the ANC, which was fighting a guerilla war in South Africa, and later, in supporting FALINTIL, the opposition guerilla movement in Timor-Leste. So we need to be very conscious that, in having these discussions, we have a history here in this place, and indeed across this country, of working with resistance movements around the world who have been involved in seeking liberation.

But we are in an entirely different context today, because we are not talking about a liberation movement; what we are talking about are the evils of people who do not recognise international law, do not recognise sovereign boundaries and do not recognise the precepts, in the case of ISIS, of the religious doctrine that they are supposedly advocating. So it is important that we build into our laws protections for Australians from Australian citizens who are involved in potential acts of war against this country, fighting for a declared terrorist organisation involved in murder and the horrors that we have seen depicted on our screens over recent months and years. If there are Australians who have Australian citizenship and are not prepared to accept their responsibilities as Australian citizens for the protection of themselves, for us and for their families, from the violence which they seek to perpetrate elsewhere, then let it be on their heads, because we cannot countenance the irrational behaviour of those who perpetrate such acts of bigotry and violence. I am thankful to the member for Fowler, who, in his contribution, told us that, as of June this year, there were 120 Australians fighting overseas and 160 Australians supporting those who fought. Thirty Australians who were involved in these dreadful acts have returned to Australia, and eight of those have now been convicted of terrorist acts.

Removing one's citizenship is something you would think an individual would regard as important. We have a lovely multicultural country. We are proudly, arguably, the site of the most successful experiment in multiculturalism in the world, and that has been a conscious effort of engaging community with community, religion with religion, with respect for cultural diversity, and understanding nevertheless that, once all those of different nationalities who have come to this great country of ours over recent years step up to swear that oath of citizenship, they have an obligation which will only be removed now by them acting as terrorists in the way in which this bill describes. It seems to me that all Australians should have confidence in the intention of this parliament, in a bipartisan way, to protect all Australians from the stupidity and the violence that has been perpetrated on so many externally to this country. In my family, my partner Elizabeth and our four children all have dual nationality and they are proud of it, as they should be. Every Australian who holds dual citizenship should be proud of that dual citizenship, understanding how important their country of origin and their heritage are to them, their families and the community.

When we are making these decisions here, we do so with a heavy obligation for all Australians, regardless of where they live and regardless of whether or not they are dual citizens. Every Australian needs to understand and comprehend that the intention of this legislation is for the protection of the rights of all Australians—to understand our human rights obligations under international law, to understand the rights of appeal that exist in this legislation for those who are found to have offended and to understand that, as a result of the 26 recommendations of the joint committee, heavy constraints have been put on the original legislation. We can have confidence moving forward that this has been done in a strongly bipartisan way for the best of intentions. The only issue arising ultimately will be whether or not the legislation, if challenged in the High Court, holds up to judicial scrutiny.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise and speak on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015. To have Australian citizenship either by birth or by migration to this country is a decision that you would have made by yourself or your parents would have made and it is the equivalent of winning Lotto. We can never take for granted the enormous and wonderful opportunities that are given to everyone who has Australian citizenship. At all times we should talk about the importance of Australian citizenship, the opportunities it provides and why allegiance to our nation is an important factor.

Sadly, there are too many in this country who worship the tyranny of political correctness. They like to have some loathing of our nation; they like to mock our traditions and our heritage. They do enormous harm to our nation. One of the threats to this country comes from the radicalisation of people who are actually Australian citizens. What causes that radicalisation? One of the main causes of radicalisation of young people lies in thinking that the Australian nation is not a good nation and thinking that we are somehow a racist nation. When they hear such talk that demonises our country, we need everyone in this parliament to call that language out.

Recently the Grand Mufti of Australia issued a very disappointing press release that talked about the causative factors of terrorism; one of those factors is those who loathe this country and who talk our country down. We need to do the opposite: we need to talk up our country for all the things that are good about it. People like to say that we are somehow racist or that we are Islamophobic, but look at the evidence—look at the wonderful achievements of people of the Muslim faith here in Australia. We have Muslim people elected to our parliaments and our local councils. They are elected as mayors and they are elected in areas where the Muslim population is a minority—the non-Muslim majority of those areas have decided that they will elect a Muslim person to represent them. How can that happen when we are a racist country? We have Muslim people who are captains of our industries and who have gone on to be CEOs of our largest corporations. They are elected to our national sporting teams simply on ability and merit. We have Muslim people who are successful entrepreneurs, who have achieved senior ranks in our Defence Force, who have been popular entertainers and commentators in our media. We have had people of the Islamic faith who have won beauty pageants. We cannot have achieved all those things, if at the same time people see that we are racists and Islamophobic. We need to call those things out and we need to say the things that are happening in our nation.

We also need to call out people who attack our Defence Force. Our Defence Force should never be described as being involved in 'foreign military interventions'. Our ADF personnel currently in Iraq are there at the request of the legitimate Iraqi government. They are not there for territory or conquest; they are there risking their lives to protect innocent civilians from beheadings and rapes. We should talk up the wonderful contributions of our Defence Force and how they risk their lives to spread peace and democracy in other parts of the world.

It is the same in this parliament. When we introduce anti-terror legislation we do not do so as a distraction from budgetary issues—we do it because on the best advice and the best intelligence that we have from our security and police forces it is needed. When our police conduct anti-terror raids, it is not some conspiracy to single out people from the Islamic community. Our police conduct those anti-terror raids because, again, on the intelligence that has been made available they need to take action to keep safe all Australians irrespective of what religion they come from. That is why our police engage in these activities. Where we see poverty and backwardness in the Middle East, it is not because of Western oppression—it is because these countries for decades have lacked free market policies, they have been governed by despotic rulers and they have had corruption and cronyism throughout their economies. That is why these nations are backwards and have not enjoyed the prosperity that many nations in the West have.

If we are talking about the importance of allegiance to Australia, we should set out what that actually means and we should hold up the values that we say we want citizens to have and to hold in this country. I would like to go through a few of them. First, all citizens should have respect for our traditions, our heritage and our democracy. We should have due respect for our national anthem. We should say that it is not acceptable for any group, in any circumstances, to walk out of any event when the national anthem is being played. We should say that we should have due respect for Anzac Day, and all institutions in this country should respect and commemorate Anzac Day. We should stand up and say that one of our Australian values is that women in this country have equal rights, that girls have the right to education and to go on to whatever career they want. They are free to choose whoever they wish to marry. We should say that the practice of female genital mutilation is a medieval, barbaric practice that is against the law of this nation and that those who engage in that practice or aid and abet it will end up behind bars for a long, long time. We should say that the values of this country are about free speech and that one of the rights you do not have in this country is the right to demand the obliteration of things that cause offence. The possibility of being offended is one of the small disadvantages of having all these rights in this country. The values of this country are also about freedom of religion. Freedom of religion includes the right to renounce your religion or to change religion or to criticise a religion. There is also a commitment to speak the English language. If we want to have a successful, inclusive multicultural society, it is important that when people go out in the shops or the streets or the clubs or the bars or the restaurants they can communicate with each other. That is why we should have a commitment to the English language. You simply cannot integrate into our society properly unless you can speak the English-language. These are the values that we need to be proud of and say that these are the values of our nation. If you want to come and call yourself an Australian citizen, these are the values that you should hold first and foremost.

I turn to the legislation. When dual citizens in this country do not have allegiance to our nation first and foremost it is absolutely correct that we take away that very valuable gift of Australian citizenship. This legislation does that under three circumstances. The first is renunciation by conduct. That applies to any person who is aged 14 years or older if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to our nation by engaging in specified terrorist related conduct. Such conduct includes engaging in international terrorist activities using explosive or lethal devices, engaging in a terrorist act, providing or receiving training connected with preparation for, engagement in or assistance in terrorism related activities, directing the activities of a terrorist organisation, recruiting for a terrorist organisation, financing terrorism or a terrorist, and engaging in foreign incursions and recruitment. Any dual citizen who engages in those activities does not deserve the rights and privileges that come with Australian citizenship.

The second category is service outside Australia in the armed forces of an enemy country or a declared terrorist organisation. If you want to go and serve overseas and take up arms against Australian Defence Force personnel, you do not deserve the right to have Australian citizenship. This bill correctly strips that right from people in this category with dual citizenship. The third provision is conviction for terrorism offences and certain other terrorism offences. If you are engaged in terrorist activity, the likes of which we have seen recently overseas—the beheading and murder of innocent civilians who are doing nothing more than watching a football match or going to a rock concert or enjoying dinner with family and friends—you do not deserve the rights and the privileges that come with being a citizen of Australia.

I commend all the other members who have spoken on the importance of this bill. Irrespective of what side of the House we sit on, every single one of us needs to call out those who try to demonise our Australian values. We need to stand up and say those Australian values are the things that have made us a successful and prosperous nation, and we need to work to continue to protect those values. I congratulate the minister for his work on this bill and the parliamentary committee that analysed it and made a few minor changes, and I also congratulate the opposition for coming on board and supporting the bill. I commend the bill to the House.

Cathy McGowan (Indi, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 and explain to the House why I will not be supporting this bill. My opposition to the bill is not directed at the intent or purpose of the bill. It is focussed very clearly at the inclusion of a retrospective provision and, under the cloud of uncertainty, on the constitutional viability of this bill. I know that the bill has been amended following recommendations from the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, and there have been a raft of necessary amendments. But it appears that, even after the amendments have been made, the bill may be constitutionally vulnerable, and, if this bill is so very important and critical to the health, safety and welfare of all Australians in the face terrorism, it should be invincible.

On 24 June this year, when the minister introduced this bill into this House, he affirmed that he was implementing a commitment made by the government 'to address the challenges posed by dual citizens who betray Australia by participating in serious terrorism related activities'. The initial bill was roundly criticised by legal and constitutional experts. It raised significant questions relating to human rights, statelessness, citizenship and the limits of executive power. Many of these criticisms have now been addressed.

My reasons for not supporting this bill differ markedly from the reasons I failed to support the tranche of national security bills previously presented by the government. In regard to the earlier bills, when bills of such significance are considered necessary, it is imperative that everybody—individuals, organisations, communities and businesses—have adequate time to scrutinise and comment. The lack of independent scrutiny of the earlier bills, combined with the lack of time given for members and senators to consider these complex bills, formed the basis of my nonsupport.

The bill here today has taken a more considered and consultative pathway. I commend the government for taking the time necessary to consult and listen before bringing this bill on for consideration by the House. I note that the joint committee received more than 40 written submissions and conducted three public hearings with a broad range of legal groups, academics, non-government organisations and government agencies. The bill, as now amended, reflects that the government has listened and acted, to a degree, and this is good.

However, in this parliament we focus on the rule of law. Our processes and procedures work to ensure that we have the highest possible standards of government and the best outcomes for the people of Australia. The integrity of the rule of law is critically important to me in my role as a law-maker in this parliament. The central element of the rule of law is that laws are capable of being known in advance so that people subject to those laws can exercise choice and order their affairs accordingly. It follows that laws should not retrospectively change legal rights and obligations or create offences with retrospective application. Retrospective laws make the law less certain and reliable, and a person who makes a decision based on what the law is today will be disadvantaged if the law is changed retrospectively. From my perspective, enacting a retrospective law weakens the rule of law and has the potential to lessen the level of confidence the people of Australia have in us as legislators.

Professor Anne Twomey, a professor of constitutional law at the University of Sydney, notes that the part of the bill most vulnerable to attack would be the retrospective provisions for people who had already been convicted of certain offences. I share Professor Twomey's concern on this issue. But, in this case, it is not only the retrospective nature of the legislation that worries me and my constituents. The bill blurs the line between executive power and judicial power where the minister can, at a stroke of a pen, remove a person's citizenship. Constitutional lawyer, Professor Twomey, has said that the issue was whether removing a person's citizenship 'would be treated by the courts as something that is akin to punishment and therefore exclusively judicial in nature'. I note that the shadow Attorney-General in his speech on this bill in this place on 12 November raised concerns with the constitutional viability of the bill. Ultimately, the opposition has chosen to accept the government's advice that it is constitutionally sound.

Citizenship brings with it rights and obligations. Clearly it is not a one-way street. It provides us with the right to political participation in the life of the community, the right to vote and the right to receive certain protections at home and abroad. This bill speaks to the very heart of our obligations as a citizen, obligations that we have whether we are a citizen by birth or by naturalisation. I know that many others have referred to the pledge to citizenship that is read out across Australia every week by new citizens, and I know that we, as members of parliament, frequently accept the pledge:

From this time forward,

I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people,

whose democratic beliefs I share,

whose rights and liberties I respect, and

whose laws I will uphold and obey.

Whether we are citizens by birth or naturalisation, this pledge enshrines the rights and obligations that all Australians share.

For us here today, the security of our nation and our people is paramount, and I fully support the government taking steps to introduce legislation to ensure the safety and security of Australia and its citizens. However, it must be good legislation. My opposition to this bill is not directed at its intent or purpose. It is focused very clearly on the inclusion of a retrospective provision and the cloud of uncertainty over the constitutional viability of this bill. Thank you.

Dennis Jensen (Tangney, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The coalition government was elected in September 2013 with a mandate to deliver strong government to guarantee a safe, secure Australia. This bill, the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015, is about implementing that promise to the Australian people.

Australian citizens have a fundamental responsibility to uphold the values and interests of our country. Irrespective of how one became a citizen, citizenship is a contract of rights and responsibilities. A person cannot uphold their responsibilities as an Australian citizen while they have pledged allegiance or support to a body that is contrary to Australia's interests or values.

This bill seeks to deal with the issue of dual citizens committing treasonous acts against Australia. Effectively, this bill will update the existing citizenship protection and integrity measures framework. Citizenship should not be devalued, and obtaining citizenship should not protect or facilitate illegality. As it stands, if a dual national were to fight with another country's regular standing army against Australia, they would immediately forfeit their Australian citizenship.

The nature of war has changed since the original act came into being. We need laws that reflect today's terrifying times. The most common form of warfare in operation across the globe is warfare conducted by non-state actors. I remind my colleagues that we are at war with a murderous terrorist organisation, ISIS, seeking a global caliphate. War of this kind is not subject to international agreements, rules or protocols. I am not advocating a fighting-fire-with-fire or an eye-for-an-eye approach; I am simply invoking consideration of the changed nature of the threat that our nation faces. It is war, but not as we know it. It is asymmetric. It is brutal. It is everywhere.

We have seen terrible incidents in the recent past where Australian citizens have been directly affected by terrorism. It has never been easier to move throughout the world, and with that comes an ease in calling new countries 'home'. Some of the greatest threats are posed by citizens here at home. This bill is a measured and appropriate response.

Indeed, we are not alone in taking these measures against enemy dual nationals that commit or deign to commit acts of treason against our country. Some of our strongest and most natural allies, such as the UK and Canada, have similar penalties. The Turnbull government have consulted and benchmarked against best practice internationally.

It is important that we as a country and as a government are determined to prevent radicalised people from roaming our streets. If people intend to become involved in terrorism, then they no longer have allegiance to Australia and their responsibilities as an Australian citizen have been compromised. Actions speak louder than words. I welcome this codifying of our community values and expectations. I add at this point that this bill in no way abrogates our responsibilities under the 1961 Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness.

Earlier this year, I spoke on the Migration Amendment (Character and Visa Cancellation) Bill. I welcomed that critical and timely piece of national security legislation then and, likewise, I welcome today's further enhancement. The visa cancellation bill is important to understanding how and where today's debate fits into the legislative landscape and time line. Because of the amendments enacted in that bill, the government is now able to act where there is a risk, as opposed to a 'significant risk', that a person might engage in a wide range of criminal conduct. Reasonable suspicion that a person is or has been associated with a group involved in criminal conduct is sufficient reason to refuse a visa. Such conduct includes people smuggling, genocide, war crimes, crimes involving torture or slavery and crimes that are otherwise of serious international concern even if there has been no actual conviction.

There should be no shame in saying that we have values and principles and that this Liberal government is willing to stand up for them. Under the previous six years of Labor misrule and chaotic misgovernment, the balance of rights and responsibilities became a question of rights only. By turning a blind eye to gross and aberrant characters and by accepting all in good faith, we expose our people to unknown dangers. Enoch Powell's 'rivers of blood' may not have run, but that is because of the strong actions taken by successive Conservative governments. I am proud to be part of a government that is bold in its actions and resolute in its decisions.

The Abbott coalition government delivered a national security statement that outlined the government's response to the national Review of Australia's Counter-Terrorism Machinery for a Safer Australia. This review found that the number of foreign fighters is increasing, along with the number of sympathisers and supporters of extremists. With the number of potential terrorists rising, it is important that law and justice agencies have the tools to deal with the threats they pose.

Under section 35 of the Migration Act 1958, it is already law that any dual citizen who fights against Australia in a foreign army will have their citizenship revoked. The expansion of that section merely addresses the modern-day threat to Australians, that being the threat of terrorism by non-state actors and non-aligned individuals. Section 35 is self-executing and ensures that citizenship will be stripped from a person who fights on behalf of or in service to a terrorist organisation. Section 33 operates so as to ensure that only dual citizens will lose their citizenship. The amendments safeguard against a person becoming stateless. They also propose that the offence must be terrorism related and must indicate that a person has acted against their allegiance to Australia. If one looks to the societal constructs of Rousseau or Locke, there it is on line 1: protect the bodily integrity of each citizen and the integrity of the state. Even the visual idea of a contract is relevant to this debate surrounding cancelling citizenship and making it easier for the minister to do so. After all, the Australian government is honouring its side of the contract or deal by protecting the bodily integrity and security of the person, but some people are not living up to their side of the deal. The deal is that if one comes to this country then one has to play by the rules as they stand, not change the rules because one does not like the rules. I put it to the House that the greatest liberty that a state can protect is life. Our primary responsibility as legislators in this place is to protect the citizens of Australia.

The changes outlined in the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 and amendments to the Migration Act are the first real attempt to update the security and protection features of visa and citizenship programs since the mid-1990s. With respect to visa grants, having weak and low thresholds for the character tests dilutes the nature of our system and costs us all more in the long run. Today we should be cognisant of the fact that citizenship is the second act of a two-act play. It is the icing on the cake. Looking at the first part of the equation—that is, visa grant—is also exceptionally important. I am proud that our coalition government has gone about the task efficiently and effectively. I and all the coalition know that security is an expensive business, prevention is always better than cure and prevention is always cheaper than cure. The people we seek to remove from the Australian community or ban from entering the Australian community in the first place are people who are freedom haters. They hate us because we Australians love freedom. It is not enough to have an Australian residency visa to be an Australian. One needs to live Australian—live the values, live the hopes and live the dreams. One needs to embrace the history of Australia. We will not and cannot let this nation ever become known as a soft touch.

ISIS have waged war in two countries, seeking to exterminate minorities and subjugate those left alive. They have captured and beheaded Western journalists and aid workers with glee. They have killed, raped, looted and burned their way through town after town. Anything we can do to prevent the flow of Australian jihadists to this area is a win for Australia. Look at the steady flow of footage and photographs of the beheadings, the mass murders, the shallow graves and the firing squads. When I saw the footage of ISIS militants murdering Shi'ites, Kurds, Yazidis and Christians, I could not help but be shocked by the stark likeness of their crimes to those of Nazis generations before them. While in the 1940s it was the SS smiling over bodies of the slain, now it is the jihadist, the thug, the barbarian, the so-called Islamic State. Herein lies the danger for Australia: we have our own citizens choosing to join these Islamic fascists. They cannot be rehabilitated; they do not go back to their day jobs and forget their days of jihad and murder. With every Australian who heeds the call to join ISIS, there is another foot soldier for their evil campaign. For every fighter who returns, Australia gains a new terrorist, a new trained killer, a new traitor, a new quisling.

For those who question the dangers of 100 or so terrorist killers in our midst, I tell you this: all you need are a few people hell-bent on causing you and your country pain and grief. On September 11, 19 people killed 3,000 and changed the skyline of one of the well-known and loved cities of the world. It took only a handful of people to claim 202 lives, of whom 88 were Australian, in the Bali bombing. The Boston Marathon killings, which robbed three people of their lives and injured a further 250, were the work of only two madmen. There is no better reminder of the destructive nature of even a single terrorist than we have seen in Canada. In a city like this, it took only one man to kill a soldier performing his solemn duty at the Canadian war memorial and to storm the parliament with murderous intent, injuring a further three people in the fight. All of these attacks could have been much worse with casualty lists often coming down to fate more than anything else.

But something we can do about this is to try to prevent it happening in the first place. This bill is one step forward. It has been extremely distressing to see report after report in the papers and in the news of the numbers of Australians suspected to be fighting with ISIS. It is tragic and yet terrifying that over 100 Australian citizens are over there, engaging in murderous acts of unspeakable barbarity. Even more concerning, however, are reports that potentially dozens of these fighters have returned to Australia. These people, these trained and experienced masters of depravity, are now living in the same streets as you or I. They are visiting the same shops, taking the same buses and mixing in the same spaces as our wives and husbands, our partners, our siblings, our parents, our children and our friends. But it would be foolish to think that these people could commit mass murder and beheadings one day and go back to their day jobs the next. It would be even more foolish to believe that they have not returned with the means and know-how to carry out their depraved and murderous desires.

This bill will be the next step in our fight against ISIS. I counsel that others pay heed to US President Thomas Jefferson when he said, 'The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.' In the final analysis, our Prime Minister would be wise to heed the words of another former US President Ronald Reagan. He said:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same …

Let's acknowledge that freedom is not free. Someone, somewhere, always pays the price.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In rising to speak on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015, I think it is important, given my job title as the federal member for Bendigo, to put on the record some comments about citizenship, as it is an issue that has been debated widely in my electorate for the last few months—in fact, probably the good part of two years, since our council decided to approve the application for a mosque to be built in Bendigo.

Quite often, the debate is: what is citizenship? What are our rights as Australian citizens? Sadly, what has happened in my community is that some people have confused citizenship and multiculturalism with patriotism. They have confused what we believe and uphold to be our rights and obligations as Australian citizens for a campaign which is against that. Locally, we have seen people don the Australian flag—basically, it is a racism campaign—and call for councillors to oppose the construction of the mosque. We have seen people in the name of citizenship demand that our local councillors and our local representatives not respect people's right to freedom of religion but instead call on them not to approve an application to build a mosque. We have seen people put forward the suggestion that Sharia law is about to be imposed on Bendigo—a ridiculous claim. A number of lies have been peddled by far right-wing extremist groups in the name of Australia, in the name of patriotism and in the name of Australian values and citizenship.

Surely, to uphold Australian values and citizenship, one would think the idea of a fair go would be to defend the Australian spirit and not isolate and misrepresent those of a particular belief. What some people have missed in this debate about citizenship, particularly in our communities and less so in what is being debated here today—is that modern Australia is a multicultural Australia. Modern Australia is now a multicultural society where every individual's right to practice his or her beliefs within the framework of the law follows the cultural tradition where that is respected and protected.

We all enjoy going to citizenship ceremonies. On the weekend, I had the opportunity to go to an unusual citizenship ceremony at our local Bendigo basketball stadium. Kelsey Griffin, who is a Bendigo Spirit basketball player—in fact one of our best—took the step to become an Australian citizen, and she did so with her family and with the Bendigo Spirit family in front of a full stadium. I thanked Kelsey for taking the unusual step to hold her own citizenship ceremony at the end of the game, because it gave a number of people in Bendigo the opportunity to engage in a citizenship ceremony they otherwise would not have. I was proud when our mayor read out the values that we hold as Australian citizens. Something that is lost at the moment in our national conversation is what it means to be an Australian, what it means to take out Australian citizenship, and the values that come with that. It means that we are part of an inclusive, multicultural society, that we respect one another's right to worship their religion and to express their culture and values. People do not give this up when they come to Australia; it is all within the framework of our legal system. We are a secular society but we do respect people's right to bring their culture here to this country and to share it with us.

Australia today is a rich tapestry. Many cultures have woven together to form our nation's fabric. Our strength is our diversity. I am the daughter of migrants. Both my parents are from England. I had to give up my British citizenship to run for parliament. When this bill was first put forward, before it went through the committee process and was heavily amended to become the bill that we have before us to today, I did question how it could impact on my family—how it could affect my sisters or, in fact, my parents—and the many other people who live in the Bendigo electorate who have dual citizenship. We are, quite frankly, one of the areas in this country that has the lowest number of people who were born overseas or who have a parent who was born overseas. Yet, despite the fact that we have higher than the national average of Australian-born residents, we are a community that celebrates diversity, that is inclusive. This goes back to the very beginning of our town.

We are a gold rush town and, as such, we had a large Chinese population in Bendigo. We also had a Cornish population and a US population. Their names still ring true in many parts of our town. But, as the Bendigo Chinese will tell you, the story of their journey towards citizenship has not been equal to, or the same as, others in Bendigo. They do not reflect kindly on Sir John Quick, who many in this place hold up to being one of the fathers of Federation. They believe he actively excluded them from citizenship when this country was first formed. Things have changed and we now do not exclude Chinese Australians or, in fact, any cultural group, from participating in our democracy.

The debate that we are having at the moment in Bendigo and in broader Australia involves groups—far-right extremist groups—that are calling for other groups to be excluded. They are saying, publicly as well as privately through social media and through bombarding people's letterboxes, that people who practise the Islamic faith should be excluded. They try to say they are not racist, yet they are everything but that. What I am concerned about with this debate is that when it started, when the former Prime Minister tabled this legislation, those same fears were invoked.

People in my electorate were having their letterboxes bombarded with this awful hate-speech mail. At the same time we had a Prime Minister saying that we will strip people of their citizenship if they engage in terrorism acts. But what the legislation that was first put before the public failed to do was ensure that there was proper and due process. When the bill was first put forward it was messy and sloppy. We were not sure how people who fell into this category would have their citizenship stripped. The bill was therefore sent to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, which received from constitutional experts a number of written submissions in evidence during its hearings. This process raised serious concerns with the original bill: whether it was constitutional and whether it could be struck down by the High Court.

As well as the committee process, the government at the same time also launched a discussion paper titled Australian citizenship: your right, your responsibility, and held a number of public meetings. I felt that one of the booklets that was released at the time inflamed the situation we had in Bendigo. When people raised an issue of concern with me, when they said they were worried about sharia law being imposed, that they were worried about what the mosque would mean for Bendigo, I would send them a copy of what we talk about at citizenship ceremonies. It was quite a positive document that talked about how we are an inclusive society and how our rights and obligations as Australian citizens are to respect one another. But this new document, Australian citizenship: your right, your responsibility, talks about terrorism in the very first page. It talks about the number of people who have been arrested in relation to terrorism and it talks about the Sydney siege. These are serious issues—absolutely—but is it appropriate to have them in a document that should be about celebrating Australian citizenship?

Any acts of violence should be condemned. Our law enforcement agencies are doing an outstanding job of ensuring that people who are terrorist threats are being investigated, arrested and prosecuted, as they should be. What we talked very little about, though, and what we have had a stunning lack of commentary about from government and from the frontbenchers—in fact where there has been dead silence—is the number of people who have been arrested who are associated with far-right activism. Equally, just as many people involved in far-right activism have been arrested for what I would class as similar situations to others involved in terrorism. A number have been arrested on weapons charges. A number have been arrested and police have discovered tasers, bomb-making manuals and other equipment during the raids. Yet these people, who are the anti-Islam campaigners, get very little criticism from this government. If these people had been of the Islamic faith there would be speaker after speaker standing up to condemn them. if these people had been of the Islamic faith, as opposed to being white supremacists, how many speeches condemning these people would we have heard from frontbenchers in this place.

The government has failed to be measured and equally to go after the far right, as they have gone after others in our community—whether it is just politically or ideologically convenient. I call on the government to be equally measured. In my community we know what happens when we do not have political leadership on this issue. We see the things we have seen, not just in Melton but in Bendigo—some locals caught up in the lies and the misinformation. I do my duty, as local MPs would do, and explain to people that sharia law cannot be imposed upon Bendigo. It is ridiculous to suggest that. I explained how our Constitution works. I explain their rights and obligations as Australian citizens: how they need to be inclusive and how our country is built on this proud tradition of migration.

But it is not something Bendigo can do on its own. We need the support of our political leaders here in this place to condemn the far-right-wing extremism we are seeing. Just as we have seen in this booklet that talks about people being arrested for terrorism and the Sydney siege, perhaps it should also talk about the far-right extremists who have been arrested and have had bomb-making equipment—people who want to preach hate and who have openly said they are quite happy to take up arms in their campaign to keep Islam out of Australia.

This kind of violence should be condemned by all of us in this place. There should be a $40 million fund established for an anti-radicalisation campaign of the far-right extremist groups. I applaud the government's efforts to work with the Muslim community in Australia, and the $40 million they have put on the table to help counter the radicalisation of young Muslim men and women. But I want to see $40 million put on the table to help communities like my community in Bendigo, and other communities, to tackle the radicalisation from the far-right white supremacists.

We are engaged in an education campaign. A lot of our citizenship values are involved in that, reminding people that we must be an inclusive and tolerant society. It is who we are as a country. But resourcing is everything. The frustration that we have locally is that we are doing it on the smell of an oily rag. Councils and health groups are putting together these resources and materials to help explain to people that what is being pushed on them by the far right is not true. It is not patriotic, it is not Australian and it is not about freedom of speech.

The bill before us today has been heavily amended and it is one that Labor can now support. A number of constitutional questions have been raised by legal experts, but it is an issue for the government. Suffice to say that at the end of the day the government will need to ensure that the legislation that is put before the parliament is constitutional and will stand up to any High Court challenge. Citizenship is not just a gift, it is also a right of people here in this country. It is something we all must value, regardless of your beliefs or your religion.

Matt Williams (Hindmarsh, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great honour for me to speak about the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill because there are some very important elements to this bill to do with the current challenges we face due to terrorism internationally. We know the awful circumstances of Paris and of other terrorist attacks around the world over many years now, not just in these last 12 months. The act of terror in Paris was an attack on the freedom of the Parisians, which is the antithesis of everything the murderous butchers from IS reject.

American comedian John Oliver spoke about the attacks last week and, while I will clean up his comments a bit, he said:

France is going to endure, and I'll tell you why. If you're in a war of culture and lifestyle with France, good … luck, because go ahead, bring your bankrupt ideology.

I think this is a very important point. While culturally there are differences between Australia and France, the attacks on France are attacks on the Western way of life.

We are not perfect and as a society we will strive to get better, but the cowardly attacks on France have further illustrated the need for the changes that this bill presents. While we are talking about France, there have also been attacks in Mali, and there were attacks in Beirut not long ago too. There are constant attacks around the world on people's individual liberties where terrorism is striking in cowardly ways.

We as a society are not perfect, as I said before, and we will strive to get better. This bill is not a knee jerk to the deadly attacks around the world but rather the result of diligent consideration aimed at ensuring the safety of Australia and Australian citizens. The review of Australia's counter-terrorism machinery found that the terrorist threat in Australia is rising. Specifically, the number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas is increasing, the number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremists is increasing and the number of potential terrorists is rising. Our security agencies are currently managing over 400 high-priority counter-terrorism investigations. This number has more than doubled since early 2014.

Since September last year when the national terrorism public alert level was raised to high, 26 people have been charged as a result of 10 counter-terrorism operations. That is more than one-third of all terrorism related charges since 2001. Around 110 Australians are currently fighting or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. About 190 people in Australia are providing support to individuals and groups in the Syria and Iraq conflicts through financing and recruitment or are seeking to travel to those countries.

The government announced earlier this year that it would develop amendments to the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to provide for the loss of Australian citizenship in the case of dual nationals engaged in terrorism related conduct. Supporting and engaging in terrorist activities against Australia's interests is a breach of a person's commitment and allegiance to our country, a bond that should unite all citizens. It is a very special privilege to be an Australian, and citizenship should be respected and not taken for granted. The new powers in the bill are a necessary and appropriate response to the evolution of the terrorist threat.

I just want to touch on some international examples to show that the Australian government has done appropriate research and consultation with governments and agencies around the world. In 2014 the UK passed legislation which expanded the government's power to revoke the citizenship of a naturalised person. Under the new laws, a person can be deprived of citizenship if the home secretary is satisfied by a number of conditions. Canada has recently passed legislation expanding the basis on which citizenship may be revoked and the process by which this may happen. The new laws were passed by parliament in 2014 and came into effect earlier this year in May. Under the new legislation, the citizenship and immigration minister may revoke the citizenship of a dual national who is convicted of terrorism, high treason, treason or spying offences, depending on the sentence received. Previously, revocation of citizenship in Canada involved three steps.

In closing, there is a place in our society for Muslims. The people of IS or Daesh do not represent Muslims any more than Martin Bryant represents Australians. This bill is not about penalising any group in society, only about ensuring that there is no place in our society for those who wish to create terror. I commend this bill to the House.

Brett Whiteley (Braddon, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to speak on an incredibly important bill. The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 is a bill which is consistent with the values and interests of the Australian people. Citizenship is not an entitlement; it is a privilege. It is an absolute honour, in fact. Australian citizenship is made all the more precious through our excellent quality of life, robust democratic system and level of personal freedoms that are the envy of many across the world. Australia is a beautiful place full of productivity and peaceful people. Across this great nation you will find vibrant multicultural communities made up of ethnicities from all over the world. We are bound together by one fundamental truth: we are Australian citizens.

As citizens we are all equal under the law. We all receive the right to vote, to have a say in how our country is run and administered. We have the right to throw out a government if we do not think they are performing to standard. We have access to comprehensive social services and healthcare systems which help us all in our times of need. Our children are given the opportunity to read and write, to learn and to grow, through our excellent schools. We are supported finically through our tertiary institutions. Australians are aspirational and ambitious and we have shaped a society which harnesses that drive and develops its potential. These privileges are ensured through our Australian citizenship. These privileges are the hard-won results of generations of Australians who have gone before us. Young men and women have gone out into the world and made sacrifices to ensure safety for those of us here at home.

Barely a fortnight ago on Remembrance Day, I, as well as many others, stood and reflected on the sacrifices made by so many for what? For our nation and for our citizenry. We enjoy the safety of professional and resolute Defence and police forces. Echoing George Orwell, we sleep soundly in our beds at night because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm. The men and women of our security services keep us safe, and their professionalism should not be understated or forgotten. These are the privileges that come with citizenship. They are willing to defend us and those freedoms because citizenship means something. Citizenship is an undying commitment to a nation and to its values. A citizen takes responsibility for the body politic, defending it with their life if need be. That is a message which must be conveyed and understood, as the threat of a globalised terrorist network has once again surfaced.

Since this legislation was introduced into this place, we have seen a wave of attacks on and in countries around the world. We watched with horror as wicked men acted on their perverted ideology, taking the lives of some 130 innocent people in Paris, the heart of liberal democracy. Whilst we are all saddened and angered by such attacks, we must remain resolute, determined and focused in our struggle. We stand with our brothers and sisters in the pursuit of freedom across this world and do so against the headwinds of hate and intolerance that are mobilised by those would seek to exploit fear rather than address it. The provision of national security is the first and foremost role of government. It is the primary responsibility of this government to keep our citizens safe from harm. It is no illusion that threats against our way of life are very real. They are present in our society and must be defeated. This message should not be one of alarm but, rather, one that sobers our minds as we come to grips with the realities of a globalised world. We must remain eternally vigilant, as this is the price of liberty. It seems that in this 21st century we must remain ever vigilant of the threat within as well as the threat without.

Whilst I have every faith in the industry of our professional and determined security forces, there is a role that legislators such as us must play in responding to this threat. This bill is a part of that response. This bill will amend the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to provide for automatic cessation of Australian citizenship, including Australian citizenship by birth, of a person who is also a national or citizen of another country where that person: renounces their Australian citizenship by engaging in specified conduct inconsistent with their allegiance to Australia; fights for, or is in service of, declared terrorist organisations outside Australia; or is convicted of a specified offence under the Criminal Code or the Crimes Act 1914. This government has taken a measured and appropriate stance in this bill. National security in the 21st century can only be assured through the continued adaption of our legislative framework.

Since the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria surfaced, we have seen a new wave of young Australians engaging in activities which are fundamentally at odds with our national values and our national interest. It is not acceptable to those who do subscribe to our values for such individuals to maintain their citizenship as Australians. Daesh is not the only group that is pulling young Australians into their midst. The globalised world is fractured when it comes to criminal organisations such as Daesh, and the government maintains an exhaustive list of groups which are considered to be terrorist in nature. It is important, as the flow of people, information and ideas continue to be facilitated by increases in technology and solidified in socially networked communities, that we set the parameters of what is and what is not acceptable when it comes to the actions of Australian citizens. We must take a stand as a community and say that we do not accept that taking up arms against our values through fighting for groups which employ medieval barbarity and evil in the pursuit of the strategic goals should go unpunished. This government is willing to make the necessary changes to protect our citizens and the promise our citizenship holds.

Civic responsibility is a concept which is at the heart of the values of this government, and I do believe it is also at the heart of everyday Australians. It is entirely reasonable to remove the citizenship of someone who reneges on their civic responsibility through fighting for an enemy of our nation and of ourselves. With rights come responsibilities. How often have we heard that? Our citizenship guarantees us so many privileges yet it also demands of us that we act accordingly and deliver on our commitment to this nation, its values and its interests. We have been decisive in this bill. Automatic loss of citizenship will be triggered whether the conduct takes place inside or outside Australia. The loss of citizenship will be immediate upon the person engaging in the relevant conduct. The minister must give notice that a person has ceased to be an Australian citizen once the minister becomes aware of the person's conduct that gave rise to that outcome, but this notice does not affect when the loss of citizenship takes place. The bill makes clear that this notice may be given at such time and to such persons as the minister considers appropriate. This bill provides that a person automatically ceases to be a citizen if they are convicted of a specified offence. This provision relies on a court having determined criminal guilt. The relevant offences include treason, espionage, terrorism and foreign incursions.

This bill provides that a person who loses their citizenship for undertaking terrorism related activities which demonstrate a breach of allegiance is not able to reacquire Australian citizenship in the future—and most Australians would say, 'Thank God for that.' This is entirely appropriate because such a person will have shown that they are not capable of upholding their commitment to our country and are not worthy of the deep honour of Australian citizenship. This bill delivers on the responsibility that this government has in protecting our citizens from the agents of our enemies now and into the future. We remain resolute in our enduring and ever-present duty to protect the freedoms and liberties of our people. This government will take the possible step, and will have the intestinal fortitude, required to make the right decision in this national security space.

Ours is a Commonwealth built on tolerance, freedom and industry. Those who take up arms against our society are our enemies. Each and every person must be held to account for their actions and, as such, those who are our enemies cannot and should not be our citizens. I stand proud of this government's effort in responding to changes in the national security space, and I stand in awe of the dedication our national security professionals have to our safety. This bill will deliver outcomes for our nation, and I commend it to the House.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the moment, it looks as though the world is in unprecedented turmoil—North Korea, Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Libya, Egypt, Nigeria, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, the shocking atrocities in France and Mali and the planned atrocities in Germany and Belgium which mercifully seem to have perhaps been averted now, and of course the Russian airliner bombed out of the air over Egypt.

You have to ask yourself the question: has world security ever been so bad? Of course, it has. As bad as it is now, it has been worse in the past. It is 101 years since the beginning of World War I and it is 76 years since World War II broke out. In that context, the current crisis the world is in does not look so bad. But the game has changed dramatically. Whereas those wars were confined to travel options on the ground, the tools of war and insurgency have changed so much. Terrorist organisations can now reach right around the world and virtually into our living rooms through technology—through the internet and social media—with things like plastic explosives and fanaticism that most of us cannot even start to comprehend. We have enemies now who would rather die for their cause than live. How does any civilised society combat someone who would rather die for their cause than live? Pretty much through human history we have worked under the theory that in the end people have a sense of self-preservation. So when someone is intent on killing themselves, as we see with suicide bombers, it is almost impossible to have a perfect defence against such tactics. That means that we must continually adjust the way we deal with our enemies and the way we approach impending threats to our borders.

Throughout our history, Australia has welcomed immigrants and refugees from all over the world; in fact, our population has been built on this. We form a wonderful cohesive conglomeration of nationalities and of peoples who have come from all over the world. Apart from our first peoples—the Aboriginals; the Indigenous people of Australia—we have all come from afar. It is great to be Australian. It is a very privileged position to be an Australian—perhaps one of the greatest privileges in the world—because there are no barriers to race, there are no barriers to nationality, there are no barriers to creed and there are no barriers to religion; all that we ask is that you be loyal to Australia, to our laws, to our rules and to our institutions. From the day that a new citizen takes the oath to Australia, they are eligible to become Prime Minister and they are eligible for any job in Australia; there are no restrictions—except, if I were to bring in the monarchy debate, they could not be king in Australia. To leave that to one side, there are no restrictions. We offer full citizenship, but it comes with an obligation. In return for citizenship, we ask loyalty. We grant citizenship and there are no strings attached except loyalty. The newest Australian has that same commitment as every other Australian—as those of us who were born here.

When citizens display disloyalty to this country, which they may still well claim to be their home, and are working in the interests of other states, how can we call them Australians? In my mind, they have forfeited their rights to be Australian. No-one should be permitted to devalue what it means to be Australian; that is unfair to citizens that express nothing but loyalty to, and pride in, their country. This should be true of any society that seeks to uphold what it means to be a citizen of their country. Unfortunately, for instance, Belgium is going through this exact situation at present in the wake of the horrific attacks in Paris, with Belgian nationals, people who call themselves Belgians and who had been welcomed into Belgium society, committing these heinous crimes against their fellow countrymen and their neighbours. In this instance, I would state that these perpetrators are not Belgians and they are not interested in being full participants in its society. Just the same can be said of Australian citizens who engage in 'conduct which is inconsistent with allegiance to Australia,' as the amendments in this bill state.

There are currently approximately 110 Australian citizens fighting in Syria or engaged with terrorist organisations. To me these 110 people are rejecting what it means to be Australian. They do not uphold the privilege to be Australian, and they are not displaying a commitment to the Australian way of life. They are obviously not interested in our values. Instead, they are pursuing a way of life that is not conducive to what we aim to achieve here—a productive and peaceful society rather than a segregated one. In fact, they seek to destroy us. Already their tentacles have reached back into Australia. Look at the most recent examples: the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place; the knife attack on the two police officers in Melbourne, which was, incidentally, planned to be a beheading; and the shooting of Curtis Cheng, a good, honest man, employed by the New South Wales police, just going about his daily duties at the Parramatta police station.

This bill is only aimed at those who hold dual citizenship. Some of those 110 people in Syria that claim to be Australian—in fact, unfortunately, they are—will hold only Australian citizenship, and, as much as I feel in my soul I want to disown them, we cannot. It is not reasonable or responsible to render people stateless. Just in terms of dealing with our international relationships, you could imagine that, if we cancelled someone's citizenship and they were stuck in an airport somewhere on the other side of the world and that country was saying, 'We don't want them,' and we are saying, 'We don't want them,' and no one owns them, it will just lead to anarchy between nations.

A phrase I used in our own party room—and you may well remember, Mr Deputy Speaker Vasta—was, 'In the end, I think we are all responsible for our own garbage.' That is the case with those who are solely Australian citizens. They are our garbage, unfortunately, and it is our responsibility to deal with them. But in the case of this bill, I guess you could say they are shared garbage, particularly if they have come here and taken a second, Australian citizenship. They have sworn allegiance to Australia. If they are conducting an act of war against us, they have broken the pledge. They have broken the pledge, not Australia, so we will terminate that pledge and say, 'We no longer owe you loyalty.' This bill sets the parameters of this mechanism, if you like—how and why it works. It has been to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, and a raft of recommendations, which the government has accepted, have resulted from that process. So it should, and does, command broad support.

The people on the street—or, where I come from, sometimes out in the paddock—are asking for action. They are absolutely looking for the government to stand up and do something, and many of them would like it to go much, much further. We have responsibilities in the international sense, and I touched on how we owe a responsibility for our people that are solely Australian citizens. But those people out there want to know that the Australian government is doing absolutely everything it can to make Australia safe, that the Federal Police and ASIO have the resources they need, that the border protection policies of Australia are strong and sound and that our immigration department is up for the task of dealing with those people who would like to come to Australia and making sure that we have quality options and that those that we allow to become Australians are those that we can trust and that deserve to become Australians. As a nation, we need to uphold the values and the safety of those that are loyal to Australia—those that are proud to call themselves Australian and would die in patriotism for this country, not those who would die in battle against us.

The removal of citizenship for dual citizens is, indeed, at the end of the day, a small step in what is going to be a very, very long campaign. It is going to be an ongoing war that this nation and the other civilised nations of the world will have to wage for many years. There are no silver bullets in this game. But this, I think, sends a very strong message—and that is probably one of the most important parts of the legislation—that we will not tolerate this behaviour. If you have dual citizenship, you will lose your citizenship. If you are solely an Australian citizen, we will accept you back, but you will not be having a very nice life when you get back here. You will be spending some time looking at the bars of a prison, because we just cannot tolerate this threat. Worldwide, we must stand as one against this disgusting and morally repugnant attack on civilised societies. I commend the bill.

Keith Pitt (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Border protection, national security and respect for the Australian way of life and our cultural values and beliefs are among the top issues of concern among Hinkler constituents. From the outset, I say that this government's tough immigration policies carefully balance the national interest with our humanitarian responsibilities. 'Stopping the boats' is not just a three-word slogan; it is backed by a policy of tough measures that have deterred people from risking their lives at sea. In the 12 months before the coalition introduced Operation Sovereign Borders, there were 401 illegal boat arrivals carrying some 26,542 people. This compares with only one illegal boat arrival in 2014.

Since coming to government two years ago, our policies have resulted in the closure of 13 immigration detention centres, saving the 2015-16 budget some $500 million. We have reduced the number of children in detention by 90 per cent. As a result of Operation Sovereign Borders, we have been able to increase the humanitarian program from the current level of 13,750 places per year to 18,750 places per year by 2018-19. It has also enabled us to take 12,000 additional Syrian refugees through proper channels, in addition to the 4,400 we settled last financial year.

I strongly support the measures contained in the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 which strip dual passport holders of their Australian citizenship if their actions do not demonstrate an allegiance to Australia. I emphasise that these laws only impact dual passport holders and do not render a person stateless. The bill applies regardless of how the person became an Australian citizen, including a person who became an Australian citizen upon birth. Similar laws have been enacted in the UK and Canada. Australian citizenship should be respected and not taken for granted. As the bill states:

… Parliament recognises that Australian citizenship is a common bond, involving reciprocal rights and obligations, and that citizens may, through certain conduct incompatible with the shared values of the Australian community, demonstrate that they have severed that bond and repudiated their allegiance to Australia.

The new powers in this bill are a necessary and appropriate response to the evolution of the terrorist threat.

A review of Australia's counter-terrorism machinery found that the terrorist threat in Australia is rising. Specifically, the number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas is increasing; the number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremists is increasing; and the number of potential terrorists is unfortunately rising. Our security agencies are currently managing over 400 high-priority counter-terrorism investigations. This number has more than doubled since early 2014. Since September last year, when the national terrorism public alert level was raised to high, 26 people have been charged as a result of 10 counter-terrorism operations. That is more than one-third of all terrorism related charges since 2001. Around 110 Australians are currently fighting or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq.

Since it came into force in 1949, the law has enforced the automatic loss of citizenship where a person serves in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. This bill expands section 35 to provide for automatic cessation of Australian citizenship if a person is also a citizen of another country and is overseas fighting for a declared terrorist organisation.

But what about dual passport holders who are living in Australia? About 190 people in Australia are currently known to be providing support to individuals and groups in the Syria-Iraq conflicts through financing and recruitment, or are seeking to travel. Proposed section 33AA provides that a dual passport holder renounces their Australian citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia. Such conduct includes engaging in terrorist activities, including the use of explosive or lethal devices; providing or receiving training connected with a terrorist act; recruiting for a terrorist organisation; and financing terrorism.

Proposed section 35A gives the minister power to determine loss of a person's citizenship when they have been convicted and sentenced to at least six years imprisonment for a relevant offence that carries a maximum penalty of 10 years or more. Loss of citizenship is not automatic, and the minister must revoke a determination if the conviction is overturned. Dual passport holders who are stripped of their Australian citizenship have the right to judicial review. The minister must table a report in parliament every six months outlining the number of successful and unsuccessful notices given and a brief explanation of the basis for those notices being issued.

Also relevant to this debate here today is the current community discussion and media coverage surrounding the deportation or visa cancellation of foreign criminals. My office has been contacted in a relation to a number of foreign nationals caught up in the unrest on Christmas Island who had been living locally. Their visas have been cancelled after committing a violent or serious offence. It would be inappropriate to comment on individual cases, for privacy reasons. I simply make the point that it is not unreasonable to expect people who enjoy the benefits of living in this country to obey Australian law. The government makes no apologies for cancelling the visas of noncitizens who commit serious or violent criminal offences in our country.

In December last year the coalition made amendments to the Migration Amendment Act to ensure that noncitizens or foreign nationals who commit crimes, pose a risk to the Australian community, or are of integrity concern are able to have their visa refused or cancelled. Mandatory cancellation was also introduced for noncitizens in prison who do not pass the character test to ensure those who pose a risk to the safety of the Australian community remain in detention until that risk has been assessed and their immigration status has been determined. Why should Australians pay to keep noncitizens in prison? Why shouldn't they be returned to their country of citizenship?

In 2014, the United Kingdom passed legislation which expanded the government's power to revoke the citizenship of a naturalised person. Under the new laws, a person can be deprived of citizenship if the Home Secretary is satisfied that it would be conducive to the public good to deprive the person of their British citizenship status and to do so would not render them stateless; or if the person obtained their citizenship status through naturalisation, and it would be conducive to the public good to deprive them of their status because they have engaged in conduct 'seriously prejudicial' to the UK's vital interests and the Home Secretary has reasonable grounds to believe that they could acquire another nationality; or if the person acquired their citizenship status by means of fraud, false representation or concealment of any material fact.

Canada recently passed legislation expanding the basis on which citizenship may be revoked and the process by which this may happen. The new laws were passed by parliament in 2014 and came into effect on 28 May 2015. Under the new legislation, the citizenship and immigration minister may revoke the citizenship of a dual national who is convicted of terrorism, high treason or spying offences, depending on the sentence received.

In conclusion, the legislative changes we have made in Australia are not about race or religion. They are about protecting and upholding our country's beliefs and values from terrorists and serious criminals. The government's amendments to the bill are in response to the 27 recommendations made by the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security on Friday, 4 September 2015.

Since 1945, 4.6 million people have become Australian citizens, including 136,000 in 2014-15. Most immigrants are extraordinary people who have helped make our great country what it is today: our history, our art, our cuisine and our social fabric. Over the past two years, my office has helped secure visas for literally dozens of people, including doctors, nurses, graphic designers, farmers and tradespeople. Many others we have helped are also making valuable contributions to our community through volunteer organisations, paying taxes and spending money in local businesses.

In my role as the federal member for Hinkler, I often have the pleasure of attending citizenship ceremonies in Bundaberg and Hervey Bay. All of the people I have met to date are excited, optimistic, positive and proud to be making their pledge of allegiance to our nation, to Australia. Their oath goes like this:

From this time forward, under God, I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people, whose democratic beliefs I share, whose rights and liberties I respect, and whose laws I will uphold and obey.

Our nation's greatest strength lies in our diversity and the Australian way of life. That strength and culture is provided by our people. Our people's safety and security will always be, first and foremost, our No. 1 priority. I commend the bill to the House.

Michael Sukkar (Deakin, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a lamentable duty in some respects to be speaking on this bill tonight—the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015. The only reason we are discussing it is that we are dealing with some significant challenges and problems within Australia, and this government is determined to deal with those in the best interests of Australians without fear or favour.

A recent review of our counter-terrorism machinery found that the terrorist threat in Australia is rising—that might seem like a really obvious statement—but this review concluded that the number of Australians joining extremist groups overseas is increasing, the number of known sympathisers and supporters of extremists in our own country is increasing and therefore the number of potential terrorists is rising. We are advised that our security agencies are currently managing over 400 high-priority counter-terrorism investigations and this has basically doubled since 2014. More worryingly and more depressingly in many respects, there are around 110 Australians currently fighting or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq; and around 190 people in Australia are providing support to individuals and/or groups in those conflicts in Syria and Iraq through financing, recruitment or they are seeking to travel there themselves.

Clearly we have a significant challenge to undertake, and the role of this parliament is to deal with those challenges, to defend our values and to defend Australian freedoms irrespective of the consequences. I am extraordinarily happy that as a result of this bill Australian dual nationals who swear allegiance to another cause or country by fighting or engaging with or supporting terrorist activities offshore will no longer be able to call themselves Australians and will not be able to return to our country, should they be overseas. This is a no-brainer—an absolute no-brainer. If we are to look at ourselves with pride as a country and as a parliament, we must assert on behalf of the Australian people that we will not tolerate anybody fighting for, or having allegiance to, somebody or some cause or some country other than our own. This is really a modern concept of treason and treasonous behaviour must be treated in the strongest possible ways.

I am probably a contrarian in some respects; I would be more than comfortable stripping the citizenship from non-dual nationals who went to fight overseas and beheaded people and put women into sexual slavery and raped and pillaged and murdered. I would be very comfortable voting for a bill that stopped them from returning to Australia, but I appreciate and understand that as a government we must maintain strong and positive relationships with our neighbours, our trading partners and the whole international community. In a sense it is really unreasonable to off-load those people to other jurisdictions. Where we have a sole Australian citizen who is engaged in that behaviour, I accept that, unfortunately, we must take them back, but, quite frankly, when I speak to the average Deakin constituent they would be more than happy to tell that person, 'Sorry, your conduct means that you are never welcome back to this country.'

Acknowledging the limitations of this bill for a range of very good and important reasons that we cannot render people stateless, I am extraordinarily proud that we have been able to steward this bill through a number of reviews in a bipartisan fashion to ensure that dual nationals will not return to this country. I say that as the son of Lebanese migrant to this country. We often talk about somebody who has a convert's zeal, and I was lucky enough to grow up in a home with a father who had a zeal for Australian citizenship that you only get, I think, from people who have had a very hard journey to get here and they truly appreciate how lucky and fortunate we all are to call ourselves Australian citizens. I have seen firsthand in a migrant community the absolute way in which they treasure being an Australian and they defend Australian values. In my household you could never say anything bad about our country because my father would not have. That is my experience with the vast majority of immigrant communities in my electorate and throughout the country when ever I travel.

There is nothing incompatible with our values of being an open, welcoming, tolerant multicultural society—indeed, it strengthens it. If you want to be an Australian citizen and you are a dual national and you are lucky enough to have Australian citizenship, we have very high expectations of you. No doubt there are many responsibilities but there are also many rights that you get with being an Australian citizen; and they have to be there together—you cannot have one without the other.

I thank the responsible ministers involved with this legislation for doing a power of work. I want to commend the joint parliamentary committee which undertook the review into the machinery of these amendments and thank them for their work, because this is still a contested area. It is quite shocking to me that there are still people—many of whom occupy a place within the Greens political party—who think that, if you have gone to Iraq or Syria, if you have beheaded Christians or have raped or sexually enslaved minority groups, you should be welcomed back to this country. Those proponents say, 'Well, we should bring them back and prosecute them here.' Given our laws of evidence, it would be virtually impossible to ever convict a person who has conducted themselves in that way, so why would we bring them back to this country? This bill ensures that those people will never walk our streets; it ensures that those people will never have the opportunity to bring home the disgraceful skills and ideology that they would have honed in that foreign jurisdiction and to ply their evil trade here in Australia.

As the son of a migrant, somebody who has been embedded in migrant communities my whole life, I say that this bill promotes the values and the responsibilities that we expect of everybody who comes to this country. We will open our arms up to you, we will give you every opportunity in the world, but if you throw that back in our face and if you conduct yourself in a way that is so incompatible with calling yourself an Australian, we will strip you of your citizenship. Unfortunately, I bet at that point some of those people may start to realise just what they have left behind—although perhaps many of them are so twisted that that would not necessarily be the case. I commend each of the ministers for the work they have done and I again want to commend the parliamentary joint committee, and I absolutely commend this bill in the strongest possible terms.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Being an Australian citizen is a privilege. Any person engaged in terrorist activities against the values we hold as Australians does not deserve to be a citizen of Australia. Islamist extremists are insulted by our way of life. They are insulted by our freedoms, they are insulted by the separation of church and state, they are insulted by equality for women and there are many other values that they are not happy with. I say with great sincerity to extremists who are insulted by these Australian values, and indeed the values of a lot of Western countries, that if you are not happy with them I encourage you to leave and go and live in countries where the values that they hold are more congruent with your values. If you are a dual citizen taking up arms against us in places overseas, as many are, then stripping you of your citizenship is a very good idea and I commend the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill to the House.

I would like to quote Sir Edmund Barton on being an immigrant and an Australian. This is from 1907: 'In the first place, we should insist that if an immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an Australian and assimilates themselves to us, they shall be treated on exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such person because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an Australian and nothing but an Australian. There can be no divided allegiance here. Any person who says they are an Australian, but something else also, isn't an Australian at all. We have room for but one flag, the Australian flag. We have room for one language here and that is the English language. And we have room for one sole loyalty and that is loyalty to the Australian people.' Every Australian needs to understand that this is what our country is. Let our politicians enforce what our first Prime Minister believed.

Obviously we have become more lenient, and dual citizenship is something that is often encouraged. As we have become more multicultural we obviously encourage and are happy for our country to have many languages. We are the richer for that—many languages are spoken in our country and obviously dual citizens are welcome here, because of course Australian citizens can also be dual citizens in other countries. But the basic premise of that statement is still there, and that is allegiance and congruency with the values that we have.

Why has this bill come before this House? The first time this issue came into the consciousness of most Australians, and most people throughout the world, was the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York back in 2001. There were some events before that, but since that date we have all been very conscious of the different terrorist attacks in the name of religion, but, as we know, those people are doing their own religion a great disservice. We have had the Bali bombings, we have had the Lindt cafe, we have had the shooting of the police staffer a number of weeks ago—there are many examples, including the Paris terrorist attacks last week. Australia's security agency is managing over 400 high-priority counter-terrorism investigations—this has doubled since early 2014—and we have, we think, around 110 Australians currently fighting with or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. The importance of this cannot be overstated. We have to make it very clear to all people in this country and all organisations, and 99.9 per cent of them are congruent with our values, that we do hold certain values and certain democratic principles very dear to the success and the freedoms of this country, and groups and extremists that are not aligned with these values are, as I say, encouraged to leave and go to countries where they feel the values are more congruent with their own beliefs.

Obviously since this bill was drafted there have been a few variations, but it remains related to dual citizens. People who are citizens only of Australia will still be coming back to Australia if they have been involved in these activities, but we will certainly be laying charges and their life will not be that pleasant when they come back. This bill amends the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to insert a purpose clause setting out the fundamental principles upon which the amending legislation is based. The bill outlines the circumstances in which a dual citizen ceases to be an Australian citizen through their engagement in terrorism-related activities and it outlines the circumstances in which the minister may exempt a person from the operation of the bill. It provides for reporting on and monitoring of the arrangements in the bill and provides for the protection of sensitive or prejudicial information in relation to that reporting and monitoring and related matters.

The bill applies to a person who is a dual national, regardless of how the person became an Australian citizen, including a person who became an Australian citizen upon birth. The bill was referred to the Parliamentary Joint Committee for Intelligence and Security in June 2015 for inquiry and report. The committee tabled its report in September 2015. The committee made 27 recommendations for amendment to the bill and explanatory memorandum. The government amendments are proposed to the bill and explanatory memorandum in response to those recommendations.

Element 1 is the renunciation by conduct, which provides that a person who is a national or a citizen of a country other than Australia renounces their Australian citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in specified conduct. The relevant conduct is:

(a) engaging in international terrorist activities using explosive or lethal devices;

(b) engaging in a terrorist act;

(c) providing or receiving training connected with preparation for, engagement in, or assistance in a terrorist act;

(d) directing the activities of a terrorist organisation;

(e) recruiting for a terrorist organisation;

(f) financing terrorism;

(g) financing a terrorist;

(h) engaging in foreign incursions and recruitment.

The government amendments to the bill provide that the conduct provisions are limited to individuals who have engaged in relevant conduct offshore or have engaged in relevant conduct onshore and have left Australia before being charged and brought to trial in respect of that conduct. The amended bill provides that the conduct provisions only apply if the conduct is engaged in with specified intentions, such as with the intention of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause, with the intention of supporting, promoting or engaging in a hostile activity in another country or on the instructions of a declared terrorist organisation.

Element 2 is that the person fights for, or is in the service of, a declared terrorist organisation. Since the law came into force in 1949 it has provided for the automatic loss of citizenship where a person serves in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. This bill expands the section to provide for the automatic cessation of citizenship if a person who is also a citizen of another country is overseas and fights for, or is in the service of, a declared terrorist organisation. A declared terrorist organisation will be a subset of those which are listed for the purposes of terrorism offences under the Criminal Code.

As amended, the bill provides that the minister, by legislative instrument, may declare a terrorist organisation for the purposes of this section where the organisation is directly or indirectly engaged in preparing, planning, assisting in or fostering the doing of a terrorist act, or advocates the doing of a terrorist act, and is opposed to Australia or to Australia's interests, values, democratic beliefs, rights or liberties, so that, if a person were to fight for or be in the service of such an organisation, the person would be acting inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia. The provisions in relation to being in the service of a declared terrorist organisation do not apply to acts that are unintentional, under duress or for the purposes of independent humanitarian assistance. A declaration by the minister of a declared terrorist organisation is reviewable by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security.

Element 3 is conviction for terrorism and related offences. As now amended, the section provides a power for the minister to determine a person's citizenship has been lost once they have been convicted of a relevant offence and upon consideration of relevant criteria. Loss of citizenship is not automatic upon the conviction. Following the recommendations, the list of offences is limited to the most relevant terrorism related offences with a maximum penalty of 10 years or more. Offences or incursions into foreign states with the intention of engaging in hostile activities have also been included through the amendments. This replicates provisions under the repealed Crimes Act and is important in ensuring the bill is as effective as possible, given the activities of terrorists overseas. To be considered under this section, a person must be sentenced to at least six years imprisonment or to periods of imprisonment that total at least six years.

This provision relies on a court having determined criminal guilt. The relevant offences include convictions for treason, espionage, terrorism, treachery, sabotage, and foreign incursions and recruitment. The person ceases to be an Australian citizen at the time a determination is made by the minister. In making a determination the minister must be satisfied that the conduct of the person or related convictions demonstrate that the person has repudiated their allegiance to Australia and that it is not in the public interest for the person to remain an Australian citizen, having regard to the following factors: the severity of the conduct that was the basis of the conviction or convictions and the sentence or sentences, the degree of threat posed by the person to the Australian community, the age of the person—if the person is aged under 18, the best interests of the child are a primary consideration—the connection of the person to the other country of which they are a citizen, Australia's international relations and any other matters of public interest. The minister must revoke a determination if a conviction is overturned or if the decision to overturn is upheld on appeal, and no further appeal can be made to a court in relation to the decision.

As you can see, this has been done with great consideration, and there are protections in there as well if a person is convicted but they are not sure what they were convicted for. I commend this bill to the House. It is a shame that this bill is important to our national security at the moment and, indeed, to the national security of any countries around the world who have done similar things. But these are the time in which we live, and one of the primary roles of a government is to protect its citizens. This bill is certainly going some way towards that.

Tony Pasin (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I begin, I congratulate the member for Page on his excellent contribution to this debate. I rise today to speak in support of the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015. This is a bill which reinforces the importance of Australian citizenship. Citizenship matters. Citizenship is fundamental to our constitutional democracy. It is the expression of our rights and our responsibilities. It is an institution.

We derive the word 'citizen' from the Latin word 'civitas', which was the ancient Roman term for 'city'. To be a citizen is to belong to a body politic, and, whilst it is an ancient system of human interaction, it is one which has delivered the modern freedoms we enjoy today. To be a citizen is to swear undying allegiance to a nation. Citizens enjoy both the opportunities and the challenges confronting their nation, and Australia is no exception in this context. Citizenship of a nation is imbued with a set of rights. No Australian citizen is above another, and absolutely none are above the law.

A fortnight ago, I stood on the grassed roof of Parliament House with a group of children visiting from my electorate of Barker. I told the young students from Monash Primary School in the Riverland that this was a place built into the hill, not on top of it, to emphasise the equality that all Australian citizens enjoy by virtue of their citizenship. I told them that this sort of arrangement was not always the case, as we stood looking at the copy of the Magna Carta just down the hall from the chamber, and I told them of the progress of our British forebears from a feudal society to a vibrant, democratic nation-state which embraces its own modernity. I told them of how the Australian citizens who came before them worked hard to build this Commonwealth and that they too had a part to play in the story of our nation.

As Australian citizens we are given boundless opportunities. We are born into a lucky country and, whilst not all of us receive the dividends of that luck, we have designed a society which safeguards our disadvantaged. Australians enjoy one of the best education systems in the world. We have a comprehensive healthcare system which leaves no citizen behind. We have a social security system which delivers equality of opportunity and seeks to rectify structural disadvantage across our nation.

Our nation is so successful that we have the capacity to send our citizens abroad to teach, to mentor, to safeguard the weak and to combat those who would seek to dominate their fellow men. Our people are widely recognised for our optimism, our sense of humour, our fairness and our ambition. We are a nation that punches well above its weight. We are considered a middle power on the international stage and we respond frequently and rapidly to help our neighbours when they experience natural disasters. Ours is a strong and healthy nation.

The democratic system that we have was built on the firm foundation of citizenship. Citizenship is the cornerstone of our society. It is the manifestation of the social contract we have with our government. But in this modern world we are faced with a new wave of disengagement with civic life. A minority is taking their citizenship for granted. Australian citizenship is one that is coveted the world over. It was the desire for a new life, one of hope and opportunity, which spurred my parents to pursue citizenship of this beautiful nation. It is the same motivation which draws people from all over the world to Australia each and every year, regardless of culture, race or creed. Australian citizenship delivers hope.

Yet, as we have seen over the past few weeks, sadly, there are people in this world—and, indeed, some in this country—that hate our way of life. They hate our freedoms and they despise our liberties. These people are so filled with hate that they seek to dislocate our society through acts of terror. We have seen attacks in the centre of Paris, attacks which were aimed directly at the home of liberty.

These criminals and their medieval world view have no place in the 21st century. Using fear and hate, they try to destabilise our confident Australian ethos and seek to force us to capitulate to their strategic objectives. Try as they might, they cannot. They will not shake our resolute and unbreakable commitment to our values and to our way of life. This government remains strong in the face of such acts of terror and responds with a steady and measured hand.

This bill brings our citizenship laws into step with the reality of a 21st century world view. We have seen the new face of an ancient evil in the proliferation of so-called Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. We have seen how their brutal, barbaric tactics, spread through modern and pervasive technologies, have lured people from across the globe to their feudal base in the Middle East. While the foreign fighter phenomenon is not new, a range of factors, including the number of individuals currently involved in conflict in places such as Iraq and Syria and the relatively high proportion from Western nations, are an increasingly concerning reality.

Of primary concern is the potential threat these individuals pose to domestic security upon their return—a very real threat, especially if they retain their citizenship and the freedom to re-enter Australia at will. The United Kingdom, Canada and France have all employed citizenship revocation as a legislative framework to mitigate this threat. We know that around 110 Australians are currently fighting for or engaged with terrorist groups in Syria and Iraq. We know that about 190 people in Australia are providing material support to individuals and groups in these countries and in these conflicts, through financial and recruitment practices, or seeking to travel to the conflict zone. There is a very real risk that these members of terrorist groups may decide to return to Australia. Indeed, as we are increasingly seeing, many are doing so. We cannot stand idly by as foreign fighters return to this country and enter our communities to spread their poisonous ideology.

We know that our industrious and professional security agencies are already actively monitoring some 400 priority cases domestically. This bill will further strengthen our security forces' capacity to deal with Australians who go overseas to partake in foreign conflicts. We must hold these people to account because citizenship is a two-way street. Australian citizenship guarantees extensive rights and liberties but, in return, it demands certain responsibilities. One of our responsibilities as citizens of Australia is an unquestioning allegiance to our nation, its interests and its values. Allegiance is a duty owed by all citizens to their sovereign state. A citizen's duty of allegiance to Australia is not created by the Citizenship Act but it is recognised by it.

This bill recognises the importance of that relationship and, as such, effectively delivers three mechanisms for automatic loss of citizenship. Of course, we are speaking here of the automatic loss of citizenship for those who hold dual citizenship. As for me, I would be happy to see individuals with sole Australian citizenship stripped of that standing if they were to take up arms and fight for a foreign nonpower such as Daesh or the Islamic State but, of course, our international conventions prevent us from doing that. Going back to those three mechanisms, the first is a new provision in which a person renounces their citizenship if they act inconsistently with their allegiance to Australia by engaging in certain terrorist conduct. Second, there is an extension to the current loss of citizenship provision for a person fighting in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. The extension provides that a person ceases to be a citizen if they fight for, or are in the service of, a specified terrorist organisation overseas. Third, there is a new loss of citizenship provision if the person has been convicted of a specified terrorism offence by an Australian court.

This government makes no apologies for taking a firm stance when it comes to the integrity of the Australian citizenship system. The security of our nation is the priority of this government. The reality is there are people out in our society today who are actively aiding our enemies at home and abroad. It is not something we should fear but it is something we must address. In supporting terror and barbarities, such individuals directly attack our values and our way of life. Such individuals forfeit all rights to the maintenance of Australian citizenship and it is that right that we are prepared to take from them.

This bill is not a free pass for governments to render people stateless nor is it an opportunistic grab for power. This bill is a necessary response to the new realities that face our national security. Not only is the position we are taking in this bill reasonable but it is consistent with the position taken by some of our closest allies, including the United Kingdom, France, Canada and America. It is simple: if you, as a dual citizen, go abroad and fight against this nation and its interests, we will strip from you your Australian citizenship. As we speak, there are Australian Defence Force personnel in the Middle East risking their lives so that this evil that has taken root in Iraq and Syria does not spread to our shores. To be Australian is to adhere to our way of life and to subscribe to our values.

This bill deals with a threat caused by those who have engaged in terrorist related conduct that is contrary to their allegiance to Australia. It formally removes Australian citizenship from a dual citizen who takes up arms against Australia. It comes down to this: we live in the greatest country on earth. We live in a vibrant, multiracial society with a robust democratic system of government which maximises freedoms and delivers equality of opportunity. Those who have gone to fight in Syria and Iraq on behalf of our enemies wholeheartedly believe that the way we live is fundamentally wrong. They believe in a monocultural society which is subjugated to the whim of a few religious leaders. They believe in stoning women to death for the offence of being raped. They believe in selling young girls into sexual slavery. They believe in crucifying nonbelievers and treating humans like property. They do not believe in religious freedom nor in freedom of speech. They have perpetrated mass murder and continue to groom our young to do their bidding for them. Not only do they continue to perpetrate these crimes against humanity but they pervert ideology to justify their action. They want to plunge us squarely back into the Dark Ages. These are truly evil men and women.

The message this government is sending is clear: if you are dual citizen and you take up arms with these barbaric war criminals, you are not Australian. You will not be an Australian citizen; we will take that privilege from you. Indeed, we will strip it from you. I am proud to support this bill. This bill is taking the protection of our nation to the next, higher level, and I commend it to the House.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015. To belong is to be a citizen. Many of us are born into that privilege. When we are born into that privilege, perhaps we may not value it as much as we certainly should. Some strive for that privilege; some strive to be citizens of Australia. Across the electorate that I represent, I see many citizenship ceremonies and people grasping hold of that particular certificate and really holding it very close and dear to their hearts. Often, you will see that certificate displayed in their house if you go and visit them. Citizenship is a gift that some of us are born with. It is a gift that is sometimes bestowed upon people who come to this country. But it is something to be valued; it is something to belong.

However, there are some who do not value it. How do they not value it? They do not value it by not valuing the people who live here and the values that we share in this country. One of the things that is special about the area I represent is how multicultural it is. For example, one of our high schools has 415 students with 54 first languages spoken.

In some respects we are living out the great dream of humanity, which is that we can all get along. We can fight one another on the football field but we can all get along. I really love that the electorate that I represent is immensely multicultural. The food is great. The culture is great. The way people interact is good. This was built around an ideal, and my fear is that many have lost that ideal. It is the ideal that somehow Australia is something special. Australia is something special. Many of us, whether five generations ago, one generation ago or in our lifetime, have come to make Australia home. I think this is unique in the world. I think Australia, Canada and perhaps America are the three most multicultural countries in the Western democracy that have really got a handle on this.

Will this bill in itself stop terrorism? Will stripping dual citizens of their citizenship stop terrorism? The answer is no. How does one fight an ideal with a gun? We should not shy away from the resolve that we must do that which is right. Ultimately, we must have the strength to do that which is right. That strength requires strong law enforcement. That strength requires a bill such as the one before us where we are drawing a line in the sand and making it clear that citizenship is not something you can take for granted, that citizenship is a privilege which some have been born into and some have been granted.

We must also fight this problem that is presenting itself to the world with education. Education is about valuing what we have. My fear is not so much dual citizens who might attack us but Australians who were born here, who feed on radical ideals and become home-grown terrorist. The only way we can tackle that is through strong education to ensure that Australians do not take for granted the values that we hold dear. Let's be clear about this. Ultimately, every generation needs to relearn the importance of what is unique about Australia. I also think humanity is not weak when it displays unity or displays love. Love is probably not a thing that we talk about very much in this chamber, but it is in the shared nature of humanity. It is when we see mankind at its best. It is when we stand united in a positive belief that we can achieve anything. Together, we can disarm our nuclear weapons, like we did in the Cold War. Together, we can tackle Ebola, like we saw in Africa. Together, we will stamp out this strange idea that death is the answer, that killing is a means to an end. That is the real contrast between the shared humanity that I believe in, the shared humanity that much of the world longs for, and Daesh and the cult that it has started.

There is no doubt that some of what Daesh is trying to do is built on some warped ideal about an Islamic state in the Middle East. Islam can be a force for good; it can also be a force for evil—just like Christendom was a force for evil in the Dark Ages. It is only when you realise that we can have a faith but also interact in a tolerant way in a modern world that we can learn to get along. The challenge that we have is that we do not divide this debate down the lines of a battle between people of Muslim faith, people of Christian faith, people of Buddhist faith and people of Hindu faith. The world cannot stand a conflict where 1.2 billion people are fighting against one another just because of different belief structures. What we can stand is a society that values different belief structures, that allows people to interact and of course debate their views about the world and that believes in the rule of law.

There is no place for Sharia law in Australian society. The only place for laws to be made is in this chamber—a representative government of secular law where we can have the debates that represent the views of the Australian people. We should be very clear that at no point should we tolerate a belief structure based on a law that does not come out of this chamber. I think citizenship is a privilege. We can win this battle with a resolve to have the strength to disarm, to disturb and to break up those who seek to harm us, and this we can do through education, through valuing our freedoms and through the love of humanity. A good humanity and a shared humanity believes in respecting one another and listening to one another's views.

Debate adjourned.