Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I apologise for not being here at the start of the committee stage. Given how much the government has talked about the crucial importance of citizenship and its central and pivotal nature to the strength of our future nation, I thought the minister might have at least summed up the debate on the second reading stage, so the committee stage started rather earlier than I anticipated. However, the amendment that the minister has spoken about is a sensible one. I appreciate he is here in a representative capacity rather than being the actual minister responsible for citizenship.

It is important to address the matter that the minister raised. My understanding is that this is one of a number of proposals or issues that were identified during the Senate committee inquiry into this legislation. It is a little bit hard to remember, because the Senate committee inquiry was 12 months ago. Despite the ‘pivotal and crucial importance’ of citizenship to the Australian government, it has taken them 12 months to actually bring on the legislation for debate. But as I said in the second reading stage, there are a number of positive measures that were in the original piece of legislation. They were supported by me and, I think, all parties in the Senate committee report 12 months ago, and we were keen to get on with them. There were constructive recommendations in that report about additional measures. This extra bit of flexibility that the minister has indicated is certainly one of those, and it merits support.

Question agreed to.

I move Democrat amendment (1) on sheet 4868:

(1)    Clause 3, page 6 (after line 8), after the definition of foreign law, insert:

good character is a discretionary test which a person does not pass if:

             (a)    the person has a substantial criminal record; or

             (b)    the person has or has had an association with another person, or with a group or organisation, whom the Minister reasonably suspects has been or is involved in criminal conduct; or

             (c)    having regard to either of the following:

                   (i)    the person’s past and present criminal conduct; or

                  (ii)    the person’s past and present general conduct;

                      the person is not of good character; or

             (d)    in the event the person were allowed to enter or to remain in Australia, there is a significant risk that the person would:

                   (i)    engage in criminal conduct in Australia; or

                  (ii)    harass, molest, intimidate or stalk another person in Australia; or

                 (iii)    vilify a segment of the Australian community; or

                 (iv)    incite discord in the Australian community or in a segment of that community; or

                  (v)    represent a danger to the Australian community or to a segment of that community, whether by way of being liable to become involved in activities that are disruptive to, or in violence threatening harm to, that community or segment, or in any other way.

Note:   Substantial criminal record is defined in subsection 501(7) of the Migration Act 1958.

This amendment deals with the definition of good character. The amendment is there before the chamber, so senators can read it. It deals with ‘good character’ being a discretionary test. This area is one of those that I think merit close scrutiny. It is an appropriate one to consider when we are having genuine debates about what citizenship is about rather than some of the populist frippery that occasionally passes for it: what are the circumstances under which somebody will be deemed to be not of good character?

This is an important area, and I am not just referring to the specifics of what is in the amendment before us. We hear from time to time media commentators and talkback radio shock jocks talking about throwing somebody out of the country whenever something unpopular is done. Unfortunately we also hear it from time to time from senior government ministers. Indeed, since we last debated this legislation a couple of weeks ago, in the intervening period between then and now, we had such commentary from as esteemed a figure as the Treasurer, Mr Costello, the Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party and someone who sees himself as a Prime Minister in waiting. He made comments, I think it was on Melbourne radio, saying that even for people with dual citizenship—that is, people who have already had citizenship granted to them—if they acted in a way that he said would be seen as divisive in Australia, there should be the potential to cancel Australian citizenship. If they have another citizenship—by no coincidence at all he used the example of somebody with Egyptian citizenship—we could cancel their Australian citizenship and send them back.

This issue of how tightly we define character is a very important one. It is, I should hasten to add, not a facet of the legislation currently before us—at least, I hope it is not; I do not think it is—that a person, once they have been granted Australian citizenship, can have it cancelled on the grounds of matters such as character or subsequent criminal behaviour. There are very limited grounds under which somebody’s citizenship can be cancelled once it has been granted. But it is important at this stage of the debate around a topic like this that we get it clearly on the record from the government representatives in the chamber that such ideas as those put forward by Mr Costello are not government policy and are not going to become government policy.

If we are genuinely going to have an approach of encouraging this pathway from migration to residency to citizenship—and that is one I strongly support—then people need to know if they take up Australian citizenship whilst remaining a dual citizen of another nation that they are not going to have that Australian citizenship cancelled capriciously for political reasons or because a government decides that they are being divisive. We all know that one of those core Australian values that is about citizenship is the right to freedom of speech, and that includes of course the right to freedom of speech about matters that we might find we disagree very strongly with. I am sure the Egyptian-Australian dual citizen that Mr Costello had in mind is one such person.

It is very important that people who come here and become migrants and citizens know that that is a secure choice, because many of them come from precisely those countries where voicing an unpopular opinion—being accused of being divisive—is enough to get them offside with the government of the time. That is why it is important to have clear definitions. I am going a bit wider than what my amendment specifically relates to because, I might say, since we last debated this legislation Mr Costello has made those comments. He is not just a maverick backbencher. He is a very senior member of this government putting forward a clear-cut proposal that people who become Australian citizens should be able to subsequently have their citizenship cancelled if they are seen to behave in a sufficiently divisive way. That, I suggest, is a very destructive notion to put forward. It would be very constructive for it to be made clear in this debate that it is not government policy and it is not going to become government policy.

It has been, as I understand it, a bipartisan or a multipartisan view in this parliament for some time that dual citizenship is a good thing. Previous amendments to the Citizenship Act prior to this one have specifically encouraged people to retain other citizenships and become Australian as well. Indeed, some of the core amendments contained within the primary legislation before us go further in that regard, to further expand it and to enable people to become Australian citizens without suffering the penalty of losing citizenship of another country.

Those are developments I welcome. I welcome the fact they are being advanced further by the government’s constructive components of this legislation, but we also have this parallel message being put out by the Treasurer, a senior government minister, suggesting that dual citizenship is a risky business because it might mean that, down the track, we have got an out to get rid of you and somewhere else to send you. That is a very destructive notion that runs counter to what I would have thought was government policy. It reinforces why it is important to have clear definitions of character.

Character in this case goes more to granting in the first place, not the cancelling down the track, but it has similar sorts of issues. You cannot have a minister deciding that a person of bad character is someone who says things that we find offensive or that we deem to be against undefined notions, like Australian values. That is why we need to have it more clearly detailed, and that is the intent of this amendment.