Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Citizenship Bill 2006 and the Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Bill 2006. The Australian Citizenship Bill 2006 replaces the current Australian Citizenship Act 1948. While most of the bill, along with the transitionals and consequentials bill, is designed to make welcome changes such as unscrambling the provisions and making them more logical and easier to understand—and I do not make that comment as a criticism of the drafters of the 1948 bill—the government has also sought to make some substantive policy changes. Some of these are minor and uncontroversial. However, some of them are more than minor and are controversial.

The government has sought to make two changes to our citizenship law which Labor find unacceptable, and I foreshadow that we will be seeking to move amendments in the committee stage and to divide on those because of the strength of feeling we have about them. Labor also had originally introduced an amendment to seek to rectify a ridiculous and offensive policy that the government was seeking to introduce in this bill. However, I can say that, happily, at the eleventh hour, the government introduced an amendment and adopted Labor’s position. I will not congratulate the government on moving; it certainly could have moved a lot earlier and seen that it was in fact ridiculous. Labor’s amendments that I foreshadow we will be moving in the committee stage deal with the resident requirement and children applying for citizenship when parents are former citizens. Labor’s resident requirement amendments are (4) to (7), but I will not go into them at this point.

Labor opposes the changes to the resident requirement because we believe that you should not depart lightly from the advice of ASIO. As the law currently stands, the general resident requirement for acquiring citizenship as an adult is two years living permanently in Australia out of the last five years. This time must include a total of one year, in the two years living here, as a permanent resident immediately before applying for citizenship. I can see there is some sense in the way that has worked. The government originally wanted to change this requirement to three years living in Australia with one year of permanent residence.

This bill was first proposed following the London bombings. When it was introduced in the House of Representatives, the Council of Australian Governments, usually referred to as COAG, had met and the leaders of the governments around Australia had decided that, according to available security intelligence, a three-year resident requirement would strike the right balance. This became one of the points in their 10-point counter-terrorism plan promulgated at that time. The governments of Australia, including the Howard government, unanimously agreed that there needs to be a balance between two competing concerns. The first is that Australian citizenship is a pledge that must not be taken lightly and that citizenship should not be too easily acquired. The second consideration is the importance of integrating people into our society and making sure they become part of the Australian community. So the Prime Minister and every premier of this country decided that moving the resident requirement from two years to three years would strike the best balance in the interests of Australia and national security. Labor supported this proposal on the grounds that national security is critical. Frankly, I think the government was disappointed that Labor supported the proposal.

It was more than a year from the time the bill went on the Notice Paper until the government changed its indolent stance and bothered to introduce the bill. In that time, 117,000 people were granted citizenship—many, of course, under laws the governments of Australia all agreed needed to be improved on national security grounds. In the context of the heightened security concerns following the London bombings it was praised as extremely important, but this government left it languishing in the bills office without any action. It was apparently so important for national security reasons, but just not important enough for the government to actually implement it. When this bill was finally introduced, the then parliamentary secretary to the then minister for immigration, the member for Goldstein, decided that it would be great to push the residency requirement up to four years. It had not gone back to COAG; it was, it seems, a thought bubble, because he knew Labor would not support something that flew in the face of what intelligence analysts were advising.

Instead of adopting the best laws for our national security, both the member for Goldstein and now the new Minister for Immigration and Citizenship sought to use citizenship as—let us call it for what it is—a political wedge. It is a shameful thing to do because citizenship is an important issue for us all as a nation. There is no doubt about that. On whose advice was this member acting? Was it the department’s advice? Was it the Prime Minister’s advice? I am hopeful that we might hear the answer today, because the advisers certainly can provide that answer in the committee stage. I look forward to the minister with carriage of this bill giving that answer. We can assume, though, it might have been the pollsters themselves—although I would be disappointed if the Howard government were poll driven on this. I can only say that you have to worry when good policy that has been ticked off as being in Australia’s best security interests is dumped because the former national secretary’s desire seems to be to outbid Labor. The member succeeded, because Labor will not go against ASIO’s advice.

ASIO is our premier intelligence organisation. Its advice is taken not lightly but seriously by all. There is bipartisan support on the parliamentary committee that looks into ASIO, and all members of the Australian parliament take some pride in ASIO’s work.

This seems to be a clever political stunt by this government, although they will get the opportunity to deny it and perhaps explain their argument. While the government bothered to consult with COAG on increasing the period before citizenship is granted from two to three years on national security grounds, it seems they did not bother consulting anyone else. However, we can find out whether they did otherwise consult. I will certainly be able to explore that in the committee stage. The Prime Minister has not given any salient reason at all for the increase from three to four years.

Labor would like to know whether there is new intelligence that says the resident requirement for citizenship needs to be upped to four years. Only a year prior to the bill being introduced, all governments advised that three years was an optimum period. Labor is foreshadowing an amendment to return the resident requirement to one that is based on national security briefings. It does require a government to take these matters seriously, to take deliberate steps and to walk through the process rather than to introduce what seems to be a process with no transparency.

I foreshadow a second amendment to fix the situation that is troubling those Australians of Maltese background. The problem is not specific only to the Maltese community, but it is an issue about which the Maltese community in Australia have approached the members for Gorton and Prospect seeking some assistance—and in fact, when I was the shadow minister for citizenship and multicultural affairs, they approached me as well. It has been a long battle by the Maltese community to air these issues and I congratulate them for their perseverance. They have been very diligent and very careful in the way that they have articulated their issues and pursued the debate.

The situation faced by some of the Maltese community is this: their parents were once citizens of Australia but, when they moved back to Malta or sought to claim property in Malta, they were forced under Maltese law to renounce their citizenship, which they did under section 18 of the current act. In March 2005, the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee recommended that children of people who renounce their citizenship under section 18 should be eligible to apply for Australian citizenship. The government has already gone to some lengths to ameliorate the problem.

The bill that we are debating incorporates a government amendment to address the problem of children whose parents lost their citizenship under section 17 of the act. This section, now repealed, stipulates that, if a person acquired the citizenship of another country, their Australian citizenship would automatically cease—that is because Australia would not allow dual citizenship at that time. However, children of people who lost their citizenship under a different section—that is, under section 18, which is renouncement of citizenship—are left out. The government argument is that these children do not have a sufficient connection to Australia. I think that is absurd; the connection is called mum and dad. I foreshadow that Labor will move a simple amendment to rectify that discrepancy—maybe it is an oversight—that the government might be minded to accept. It affects a small number of people but it makes a powerful difference to their lives. I hope this amendment will achieve bipartisan support.

One of the policies that the bill introduces renders certain types of stateless persons ineligible for citizenship if they have been convicted of an offence under a foreign law for which the sentence was five years imprisonment or more. The minister in such a case had to refuse them citizenship. There is nothing more appalling than this government allowing another country to determine our citizenship laws. Iraq under Saddam Hussein, Chile under Pinochet, Burma—why should these tyrants be allowed to knock back people possibly of outstanding character? Under the government’s proposal, somebody of the stature of many of the people who have made a significant contribution to Australia would have been refused Australian citizenship. Yes, conviction under foreign laws should definitely raise alarm bells, but it should not determine our citizenship laws. It is wrong and deeply offensive for the government to outsource citizenship to some of the worst regimes in the world.

At the eleventh hour the government introduced an amendment to add a test of reasonableness, which Labor had been calling for. We are pleased that the government actually paid attention to this issue. It took up Labor’s concerns about what can only be described as outrageous policy becoming law. It saw the better course, adopted our position and did not pursue it. But this was not a solution that the government quickly adopted. As I understand it, there was significant debate in the House of Representatives before the government capitulated on this issue. I will not then give it the credit which I would otherwise generally extend where the government has seen the light and amended bills to accord with common sense. I do not think in this instance that the government deserves the credit. I can thank it, though, for at least seeking the amendment. It does have the numbers in this place, so it would have been able to push that through if it had insisted.

Labor will be moving these foreshadowed amendments because we believe that citizenship and our national security are too important to play political football with. It is important that we get the balance right; there is no argument there, especially when we have national security at stake. But you also have to look at the whole of the argument about citizenship and the history of citizenship to see how it has operated in this country.

Labor are glad that the government has pulled itself together to bring this bill before the parliament in 2007—although it had been sitting around for some time. We are pleased to see that common sense has prevailed and that the government has agreed that the minister should retain some discretion when it comes to determining whether foreign law should decide Australian citizenship. In this instance, though, I hope that the government does the right thing by the Maltese community and accepts Labor’s foreshadowed amendment. I have raised it during the second reading debate to give the government time before the committee stage, if it is minded to change its position, to amend the bill accordingly.

If the amendments that we have foreshadowed are not supported, Labor will not oppose this bill; the bill will pass. There is much in the Australian Citizenship Bill 2006 that is beneficial. I have used my available time today to centre on some of its undesirable aspects, but it is worth indicating that this bill does contain policy that is supported by Labor. It will move us forward. There are of course many bills that go through here that Labor support. This is one of them. It does have merit. Both the government and the opposition see that it entails good policy, albeit with some problems that should be rectified. We will support the bill, as I have indicated, and we will support the Australian Citizenship (Transitional and Consequentials) Bill 2006 as well.

However, I think the government could learn much from a different process. If it is going to bring bills forward, it should do so in a sensible and reasonable way. If it is going to announce that it is going to bring legislation forward following COAG then it should do so in a reasonable time to indicate to all of the other members of COAG that it is serious about these things, rather than allowing legislation to languish in the bills office or on the Notice Paper for some time before it is brought forward. I think that is a fair criticism. This government should explain why it has not done that. In conclusion, I express disappointment in this government for using, or appearing to use, citizenship as a political football—or a wedge, as others might call it—to try to come up with a reason for that. I look forward to hearing why it has moved the resident requirement from three to four years. I look forward to an explanation for that and for why it did not go to COAG. There may be a reasonable one; I look forward to hearing it. (Time expired)