Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

They have done nothing about it. They said it was urgent. They rushed it to COAG. They rushed out press conferences and releases--—and then sat on the side and did nothing.

Now the government comes back and says, ‘Although we’ve done nothing for the last 12 months, we now want to make it even tougher.’ Now the government has amended its own legislation to increase the residency requirement to four out of the last five years. It has presented very slim reasons, and, in fact, no new reasons for this increase—no national security case; no case based on well-thought-out measures to improve the value of citizenship—but simply increased the period from three years to four years. That is something which cannot be supported.

There is a broad consensus in this House and in the community that we need to do more to ensure that people know what they are signing up for when they become Australian citizens, that they sign up for a clear set of values and a clear set of obligations and, of course, that English is highly desirable for anyone seeking to become an Australian citizen. But this continual attempt by the government to extend the residency requirement is not a sustainable way to achieve that. They have not presented reasons and, by approaching this matter in an ad hoc way and simply adding on another year, they attack the sustainability of what they are trying to do with the broad support of the opposition.

I am glad that the government has seen sense and is no longer attempting to introduce these changes retrospectively. The Labor Party put the view very strongly that we would support the increase to three years but that this should not be applied retrospectively, which would have been quite unfair. It should only apply to new arrivals in Australia and, as I understand it, the government has accepted that. Imagine the situation of people who had been looking forward to getting Australian citizenship, had been told what the requirements were, had filled out the forms and had been patiently waiting for the day to come, only to have the goalposts moved and to be told, ‘Sorry, you did meet the residency requirements but now we’ve changed them.’

It is worth remembering the context in which we advertise, encouraging Australian residents to become citizens. We spend government money asking people to take the pledge—and I do not have a quarrel with that; it is an appropriate use of government advertising, unlike most of the other advertising we see from this government—but we cannot advertise and encourage people to take out citizenship if we then change the goalposts on them.

Before I became a member of the House I had the privilege of serving as mayor of my city. One of the obligations that goes with that position is the swearing in of new citizens, which I did on behalf of the former Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, who is in the chamber. When I was mayor I swore in probably 1,000 Australian permanent residents as Australian citizens on his behalf. He would agree with me that there are few greater thrills in public office than to see the look on somebody’s face when they take Australian citizenship. It means a lot and it is not to be taken lightly. And to change the goalposts and to say, retrospectively: ‘We are now no longer going to let you be a citizen. We know we told you that you had to be here for only two years, but now you have to be here for three or four years,’ would be most unfair. I am glad that the government has taken on board the Labor Party’s criticism.

I would like to spend most of my time talking about proposed section 21 of the bill. By way of background, under the old section 17 of the act, until 2002 Australia was one of those countries throughout the world that stipulated that you lost your Australian citizenship if you acquired the citizenship of another nation. This was grounded in the old way of doing things—the philosophy that it was somehow disloyal to Australia to also adopt the nationality of another country. Of course, forcing people to choose between Australian citizenship and that of another nation was always a false choice and cut Australia off from a source of talent and the loyalty of a large group of people. Some of the elements of this old way of thinking are still evidenced in this bill, as amended by the government.

The old section 18 of the act said that an individual who had citizenship of another country could formally renounce their Australian citizenship. The most prominent and obvious example was in the case of Maltese Australians. Of course, many thousands of Maltese citizens emigrated to Australia after World War II and, outside Malta, there are more Maltese in Australia than in any other country. When these immigrants had children in Australia they of course became Australian citizens and, under Maltese law, they were Maltese citizens by descent. In some cases the original Maltese immigrants returned to Malta and took their children, Australian citizens, with them. When these people returned they of course retained their Australian citizenship.

But the problem arose under the former Maltese law, whereby those children between their 18th and 19th birthdays had to choose which citizenship to retain. If these individuals did not renounce their Australian citizenship by the time of their 19th birthday they lost their Maltese citizenship. This was an invidious choice for these individuals but, at the end of the day, many of them had no choice. Children who were living with their parents in Malta, many of them undertaking further education, had no choice but to renounce their Australian citizenship, as difficult as that was for them. If they did not renounce their Australian citizenship they would not have been able to continue their studies, they would not have been able to work for the Maltese government and they would not have been able to buy property in Malta. So it is unfortunate that the Maltese government at that point imposed that choice on Australian citizens in Malta. Thankfully, in 2000 Malta changed that policy and they now accept dual citizenship, as do most nations around the world.

The difficulty arises now because those people who renounced their Australian citizenship have had their own children. Under this bill, the child of a person who forfeited their Australian citizenship under section 17 of the former act is able to reclaim their Australian citizenship. And that is a good thing—we welcome it. But the child of a person who was forced to renounce their citizenship under section 18 is not able to do so. This is a false dichotomy, an artificial distinction, and it is one the government should rectify and it is one that they are refusing to rectify. It is also unfair to between 2,000 and 3,000 children who are living in Malta.

The government mounts the case that people who took citizenship of another country, and who therefore lost their Australian citizenship, often did not know the implications of what they were doing, whereas the people who formally renounced their citizenship did know the implications of their actions. As I say, it is a false distinction. Many of the people who took other citizenship and therefore automatically lost their Australian citizenship did know the implications of their actions. That is not to say that it made their decision any easier. It is not to say that it was not a wrench for them, but they did know the implications of their actions, just as Maltese citizens who renounced their citizenship, under section 18 of the old act, also knew the ramifications of their actions. It does not reflect what the government said that they would do. In his address to the Sydney Institute on 7 July 2004, the former Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, the member for Moreton, said:

… the Australian Government has reconsidered this issue and decided that the principles underlying the resumption provisions should apply equally, regardless of whether the purpose of renunciation was to acquire or retain another citizenship and regardless of a person’s age. The Government will amend the act accordingly and include a requirement that the person be of good character.

But the bill that we see in the House today does not reflect that undertaking given by the member for Moreton to the Sydney Institute in July 2004. The government have, frankly, squibbed on their undertaking to Maltese Australians and reneged on their undertaking to the thousands of good Australian citizens who had to renounce their Australian citizenship under Maltese law. The government should rectify that and they should abide by the undertaking that was given by the member for Moreton in 2004.

It also does not reflect the recommendation of the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional References Committee, which strongly recommended that the children of people who renounced their citizenship under section 18 of the act should be treated the same way as people who forfeited their citizenship under section 17. It was a unanimous recommendation and the government should accept it. Importantly, the failure to deal with this issue in an inclusive way also reflects the old way of thinking.

It is of course true that Australian citizenship is a privilege which needs to be guarded closely, but it is equally true that as a nation Australia has not adequately valued the benefits that come to us from our diaspora. As a nation we have not fully capitalised on the potential of the large number of Australians who live overseas but who still regard Australia as home. On any given day, there are up to one million Australian citizens who live overseas. They still regard Australia as home and they are still happy to help our country.

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