Jacqui Lambie (Tasmania, Jacqui Lambie Network) Share this | Hansard source

I just want to make this quite clear for those who are not quite sure what our amendments are. Our amendments make an exception for New Zealanders who have a special category visa. Anyone on a special category visa will not be subject to visa cancellation under this amended power. The minister says this is a simple bill, and so are these amendments. I've said it before: we need to protect our Anzacs. The minister said earlier that New Zealanders living in this country can get their visas cancelled on character grounds and he said they have an option to appeal that decision. How long do they get before they're deported? How do they get access to a lawyer? Why should they be cancelled at all?

What if they were brought here as a kid and have lived here for the last 30 years? They're not technically our citizens but they didn't become criminals on New Zealand's watch, it was on ours. We have a special bond with New Zealand and that's already recognised in our Migration Act. We should also treat our New Zealand neighbours with respect. The government talks up how we shouldn't worry about this bill, that it just returns things to how they used to be. But how things used to be was pretty ordinary, and now is the chance not just to take things back to how they used to be but to make them better than before. That's what we're supposed to do here, after all: if we can make something better then we do that. And if it means that we can have better diplomatic relations, especially with our Anzac counterparts, then we need to move heaven and earth to make sure those remain.

New Zealanders on a subclass 44 visa are often Australians in every way except for their citizenship status. They're part of our community, they've lived here for their whole lives and now they're are at risk of being sent to a country that they don't know from a bar of soap. This amendment to the bill stops that from happening. It's just common sense and it's good political relations with our New Zealander counterparts.