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

At the risk of being chided by Senator Ludwig again for talking too long, I shall make a brief contribution. As I tried to make clear in my comments, I am not accusing this government of, from the outset, proposing to misuse the test in that way, but assurances from the minister now about what the government are going to do and how they are going to operate with regard to developing this test are not sufficient. We are passing a law; it will stay as part of the law well into the future. I would not be surprised if, at various stages in the past when amendments were made to migration laws and other laws relating to the entry of people into Australia and when various tests were put forward, commitments were given that they would not operate in particular ways. It is very common in this place, and it was very common in the past, for concerns to be raised that something might be misused, or used in a negative way, and for the commitment to be given that it would not be. Of course, we cannot tie any future government or any future minister to those commitments. They are governed simply by what is in the actual law. And we have seen abuses of the law in the past. Some of the provisions in the Migration Act have been used in ways that were not expressed as an intent when they were originally put forward. Certainly the disgracefully unfair abuse of dictation tests and the like in the past to exclude migrants from particular ethnic and religious backgrounds was not expressly detailed in legislation as being the intent of those tests, but the test has given that power to be misused.

The Democrats amendment being considered here would not provide 100 per cent perfect protection against that sort of abuse in the future but it would at least reduce the prospect of that sort of abuse. We should recognise that putting in place the requirement for a test like this without putting protections in the legislation has the clear potential for such a test to be used for discriminatory and politically motivated purposes in the future. I cannot believe that we could be so ignorant of our history—particularly when we are talking about citizenship tests that are supposed to reaffirm our understanding and knowledge of our history, including quite recent history—in which there are many examples of Australian governments applying laws regarding migrants in unjust and very discriminatory ways. We should be putting protections in this legislation to minimise the chance of any future government using this law in short-term, divisive ways. The legislation is meant to be about inclusion, about encouraging integration and about promoting social unity—I do not think it will particularly achieve that, but that is clearly the intent—but we leave open the potential for it to be used for very divisive purposes down the track, as our current laws relating to migrants have been used in the past and, indeed, the very recent past.