Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move Australian Greens amendments (1), (6) and (7) together:

(1)    Clause 17, page 19 (line 21) to page 20 (line 7), omit subclause (4).

(6)    Clause 24, page 34 (lines 5 to 32), omit subclause (4).

(7)    Clause 30, page 43 (lines 6 to 34), omit subclause (4).

I have spoken to these amendments in my second reading speech, which was some time ago now. This legislation gives ASIO the power to veto any citizenship application. These amendments seek to remove the power given to ASIO by this piece of legislation to veto any citizenship application. As I explained in my second reading speech, it is the view of the Greens that the decision about who is granted citizenship should be made by the government of the day. We accept that there is a role for ASIO in this process. We believe that ASIO should continue to do what they do now—that is, they should be able to provide advice to the government in relation to citizenship applications; they should have the capacity to vet applications and make recommendations. But the decision maker should be the government and the minister.

This piece of legislation allows ASIO to tell the government who should become a citizen, but it is the view of the Greens that the government of the day should make the decision on who can or cannot become an Australian citizen. It is perfectly acceptable for ASIO, like any other department, to make recommendations to the government—to say yes in this case or no in that case. That is ASIO’s job, but we do not think it is the role of ASIO, our secret police force, to make the decision on who is granted citizenship. The Greens believe that is a decision the elected government should make. This amendment seeks to return us to the situation that we have today, which is that ASIO can say they think a person should or should not be granted citizenship. That is entirely appropriate. But it is the view of the Greens that the government should be the decision maker.

In my second reading speech I spoke about a number of issues and community groups such as the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, which raised this issue in its submission to the inquiry into this bill. They called the bill:

... an unwelcome intrusion of faceless secret agents into the process of defining who is a citizen in our free and democratic society.

They went on to say:

The proposal violates the Statelessness Convention because the Minister will not be able to prevent a person from becoming stateless.

The clause that the Greens are seeking to have removed says that, if ASIO says, ‘Don’t give this person citizenship,’ the minister has no power to say that he will or will not take ASIO’s advice. Under what is proposed in this legislation, if a stateless person is applying for Australian citizenship the minister is required to deny them citizenship because ASIO has told the minister to do so. Whether they have told them the reasons or not, certainly nobody else knows; whether the minister knows or not is unclear to me. The minister has to take ASIO’s recommendation and say, ‘You cannot become a citizen.’ They make people stateless by having to refuse them citizenship. If a stateless person applies to become a citizen of Australia, and the minister is required under the legislation to take ASIO’s recommendation that they not become a citizen, then the minister is making somebody stateless.

This is why the New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties, in its submission to the inquiry into this bill, criticised the legislation for violating the statelessness convention, to which Australia is a signatory. The legislation does that because it does not allow the minister to prevent someone from becoming stateless. The Greens want to give the power to determine who gets citizenship or not to the government of the day, rather than to ASIO, as this piece of legislation seeks to do. The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties was:

... concerned that, in the current political climate, this proposal will disproportionately impact upon the Muslim community. This could undermine the desirability of Australian citizenship in the eyes of some, rather than fostering a strong multicultural community of citizens—our strongest defence against terrorism.

This is something that I have spoken of many times before, including in relation to this bill. We as a nation should be extremely proud of the fact that people from all around the world want to come and live in Australia. Indeed, many of them take out Australian citizenship. That is a great thing and something that we can all be proud of. The concern that I have raised on behalf of the Greens in relation to this legislation is that it puts more barriers in front of people in doing that, as does the government’s proposal around citizenship tests and English language tests.

Just yesterday I spent time with a number of people who work with newly arrived migrants—many of them are young Sudanese men, some from Darfur, and there was a young Burmese woman. There was a range of people that they work with. They teach an intensive English course supported by the federal government. They try to help them to understand how to engage in the Australian community. When you have a young man in your class and he thinks, ‘It’s hot—I’ll take my clothes off,’ that is something you have to struggle with. They have to say: ‘We don’t do that in Australia. If it is hot, you don’t just take all of your clothes off in the middle of a classroom.’ The young Burmese girl is so bruised from the beatings that she has received but, extraordinarily, she managed to have a child as a result of rape that she experienced in Burma and she is here in Australia trying to learn and understand English. What this piece of legislation and the government’s proposals around citizenship and English language tests do is make it even harder.

You have this young Sudanese boy who may be very comfortable and competent sitting on a hill looking after a herd of goats in Darfur, but he does not know how to cross the road or use a traffic light or what to do in the Australian community. He needs an intensive amount of assistance for that. That needs to be supported. It cannot be provided at the level that is required right now. The government’s proposals are that he also needs to learn English to a point where he is able to do a multiple choice test on a computer. This is a guy who has never learnt a language. He has never been to a school. I am sure he is extraordinarily competent at many things. He is probably a great athlete as well. He has arrived in Australia and this is his new home. He wants to become a citizen. We should be supporting him in that process, not putting steps and barriers in place.

Those are the concerns that the Greens have about not just this bill but also other proposals that the government is putting forward to make it harder for new migrants to be able to become citizens. We do not think that everyone should be given citizenship—by no stretch of the imagination. But we think that the process that exists in Australia allows us to do that. I will get onto that issue later when we talk about how long people should wait before they can make an application for citizenship. The justifications we have heard from the government on this issue are questionable. Given that the government’s argument has been that we need to protect people from terrorism so we need to extend the citizenship waiting period from two years to four years, what are they saying about the system that exists now? I will be interested to hear from the minister on that point.

What the amendments that we are currently dealing with are saying and what the Greens believe is that the government of the day should determine who can become an Australian citizen. That is the system we have now. We think that ASIO has an important role to play in providing advice to the government. But we think that the government, not the secret police force, should determine who is able to be a citizen in Australia. I commend these amendments to the Senate.