Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

I certainly hope that we do not see those provisions for stateless persons being introduced at any time. I do not want to see a situation where the law of another country has any bearing whatsoever on Australian citizenship.

We find ourselves supporting the bill. We are not going to be in a situation where we are going to say no to the Maltese community, which has been campaigning for a very long time for a better deal. We think the government can go one step better again and act favourably by supporting the amendment I have foreshadowed. I hope that the government will take that extra step. We believe Australian citizenship is extraordinarily important. We want to make sure we get the balance right and that Australian citizenship is valued for the important step that it is. Rather than seeing citizenship as something to unite, I do not want to see legislation such as this ever being used as some sort of political wedge. If the change to four years had come out of the COAG process, I may have been sceptical about it but Labor would have looked very seriously at whether or not, in the face of the best intelligence, it was a case of getting the balance right. That is where I believe the intelligence on the balance ought to come from. It ought to come from briefings from ASIO, not from briefings from Mark Textor.

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