Kelly Hoare (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It seems surprising that the government has decided to revise the 1948 Citizenship Act, given that it has spent the last 10 years attempting to return Australia to the 1950s with a series of regressive and decidedly retro policies. The Australian Citizenship Bill 2005 and the Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Bill 2005 will make substantial changes to the legislation governing citizenship and place necessary restrictions upon those who may apply for citizenship, as well as reorganising some of the processes by which citizenship can be granted and revoked.

While Labor understands the need for a revision of the 1948 Citizenship Act, there are some elements of the citizenship bill presently before the House which are just plain unfair and some elements which are downright worrying. In particular, subclause 17(4) is deeply concerning as it raises important questions about our civil liberties and the freedom of information in this country that the government is yet to provide any reassuring answers to. For those not entirely familiar with the many amendments proposed by this bill, subclause 17(4) states that the minister for immigration must not approve an application for citizenship where ASIO has provided an adverse security assessment of that person. In other words, if ASIO decides that a person represents a real or potential threat to the country, the minister cannot, by law, approve their application for citizenship.

There are several things wrong with this, not the least of which is the fact that the minister’s power—that is, the power of an elected representative and member of parliament—would be secondary in these cases to the power of a non-elected, non-accountable body which functions under a heavy veil of secrecy. Why should a non-elected body be above parliament and above the minister? That issue aside, there is also the question of how and why ASIO’s assessments are made. It is not overstating the case to say that Australia’s recently implemented terrorism laws give this organisation an almost unlimited amount of power—power which its representatives are free to use in any number of situations and a power which they exert under a screen of anonymity and institutional silence.

As we have already seen in the case of Jack Thomas, ASIO are allowed to declare someone a security risk without ever revealing the sources of their information, providing proof of their claims or revealing anything about their investigation to the subject of it. In short, someone can be accused, tried and condemned often without even knowing they have been under suspicion and without any recourse to the legal challenges which are every citizen’s supposed right in this country.

In the case of risk assessment for the purposes of a citizenship application, ASIO is not required to reveal anything about their assessment except its result—that is, they can label someone a threat and effectively deny them citizenship without ever having to reveal why, and the subject of this assessment has absolutely no choice but to accept this. This is a violation of our civil liberties however you wish to look at it, yet the government seem completely unconcerned. They seem perfectly happy to let shadowy, non-representative organisations decide the future of potential migrants to this country, despite the obvious opportunities for misuse and abuse such a system would provide. These civil liberties concerns are serious, as is the minister’s lack of discretion in the face of an ASIO assessment.

Also worthy of the House’s attention is the fact that, under the present draft of this bill, the minister does not have discretion over citizenship applications made by applicants who have spent more than five years in a foreign prison. Clause 19D(6) in the proposed government amendments requires that any applicant who has spent more than five years in prison in their home country or overseas may not become a citizen. Flat rule, no negotiation allowed. This is an obvious example of how the government sees everything in black and white terms—if you have served time in jail, you must be a dangerous criminal and a threat to Australia.

We on this side of the House acknowledge that life is a little more complicated than that. For example, what if a refugee, after having lived here with their family for the required length of time, applies to become a citizen of the country which took them in their hour of need? What if that refugee had become a refugee because they had opposed the government in their home country and had been tortured, persecuted and imprisoned for speaking out against injustices? What if that refugee had been imprisoned for five years, 10 years or even 20 years, perhaps illegally, perhaps without charge or trial, for the simple crime of criticising a tyrant like Saddam Hussein or Than Shwe?

Is that refugee the kind of dangerous person who deserves to have their application for citizenship denied? According to the current bill, yes, that person has served time in prison; therefore, they are a threat to Australia and cannot become a citizen. Never mind that their crime was one of bravery and strength, and never mind that they may have been standing up for freedom of speech, freedom of political beliefs and freedom to live—all things which are entirely in keeping with ‘Australian values’, which the Prime Minister keeps going on about. Never mind that their imprisonment was unjust and possibly illegal; all that counts is that they have served time in prison. Labor would like to see some ministerial discretion allowed when assessing citizenship applications from those who have served time in jail, rather than the present blanket rule, in acknowledgement of the fact that circumstances are not always as black and white as the government would seem to believe.

This bill contains many changes, not the least of which is an increase in the age at which people can be considered exempt from the requirement to have a basic knowledge of English. At present, that age is 50. This bill will see it increased to 60. In relation to this, I would like to bring to the attention of the Main Committee the fact that the government recently admitted, before the Legal and Constitutional Legislation Committee considering estimates, to slashing $10.8 million from the Adult Migrant English Program—the front-line program that offers migrants to this country their best chance of properly integrating into our society and becoming a valuable part of it. The government has slashed $10.8 million from a program that can mean the difference between a life of acceptance and a life lived on the periphery, never quite feeling at home and never quite understanding what is being said.

At the same time, this bill will increase from 50 years to 60 years the age at which citizens are no longer required to have a working knowledge of English. Where are these extra people going to get their English training? How will the migrant English program, already stretched by such brutal cuts to its funding, cope with an increase in student numbers? This is yet another example of the government not thinking things through properly. On the one hand it shifts the goalposts so that more people have to learn English while on the other it snatches away the funding for the very programs which would accommodate this. Which is it to be? Is the government going to face up to its responsibility to assist these people in becoming full and proper members of our society by speaking our language or is it going to take the cash and run, leaving migrants to muddle along as best they can? Of course these things cost money and, yes, it is money that the government would probably rather spend on something popular and vote producing, but in the long run the social costs of not properly funding the Adult Migrant English Program will be far greater than the present financial cost.

There is another issue raised by this bill, and that is the issue of ‘Australian values’ which has been so preoccupying the Prime Minister of late. The government seem to think that subscribing to Australian values should be a necessary requirement for attaining citizenship of this country, which is why I bring it up here today. By ‘Australian values’, they of course mean the things which they themselves have deemed vital and important. But, if it were to be the case that subscribing to ‘the world according to Howard’ was a necessary condition of Australian-ness, they would have to go ahead and strip me, along with hundreds of thousands of others like me, of our citizenship and our birthright, because I do not subscribe to a value system which allows for the five-year incarceration of an Australian citizen in an American military prison without even so much as a token trial. I, unlike the Prime Minister, think it is wrong to deprive innocent refugees of their liberty when their only crime is to seek a better, safer and happier life in this country. I do not believe that it is ‘necessary’ or ‘important’ or ‘key to our security as a nation’ that our young people continue to be sent to fight an illegal war in a rapidly deteriorating country. Do these things make me less Australian? Am I somehow less worthy of citizenship because I believe in human rights, fair and equal justice and peace? It would seem so in the eyes of the Howard government, despite the fact that these are the very values upon which all good societies are built.

The government just does not seem interested in peace, human rights, justice or any of the positive values which this country used to be renowned for but which in the past 10 years have been allowed to fall by the wayside. It seems to be interested only in furthering its own power and silencing dissent by painting anyone who criticises it as a dangerous opponent to Australia at large and a threat to all of us. This is the subtext to any conversation about Australian values. But these values are not my values, Prime Minister. They are not the values of open-minded, tolerant, accepting Australians. They are not even the values of many of those who voted for the government last time. This government is out of touch, and the Prime Minister’s insistence on narrow-minded, jingoistic, 1950s Australian values just demonstrates that yet again.

In short, while overall this legislation is a step forward in adjusting and updating our citizenship legislation to face the changed realities of the present day, many aspects of the legislation seem ill considered and ill thought through. It is hard to believe that a government so in love with its own power and influence as the present one would be willing to place a non-elected organisation above the immigration minister in terms of final decision-making power over citizenship applications from those deemed to be a security risk, yet that is exactly what this legislation proposes to do.

It is similarly worrying—though not altogether surprising—that the government is prepared to grant ASIO the power to make such risk assessments without needing to justify their findings to the public or to a court of appeal. And of course there is the outright stupidity of slashing funding for migrant English education programs while at the same time increasing the number of people likely to be seeking these services by increasing the English-speaking exemption age from 50 to 60.

We acknowledge that changes to the citizenship legislation may be necessary in this present age of heightened threat to Australia, but we do not believe that the government should be allowed to threaten our civil liberties or effectively devolve power to an opaque and unrepresentative organisation in the name of this. Labor will support this bill, but I urge the government to support the amendments moved by the member for Watson.

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