Gavan O'Connor (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Citizenship Bill 2005 and the Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Bill 2005 consolidate and rewrite the Citizenship Act 1948. Most of the legislation is concerned with the taking of citizenship, according to the Australian Citizenship Council report released on 18 February 2000. The latest amendments, tabled on 12 October 2006, include recommendations from the inquiry of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs into Australian citizenship and the inquiry of the Standing Committee on Family and Human Services into overseas adoption in Australia. These have resulted in amendments in relation to adoption rules and stateless persons.

This is one of those bills in which there are elements that the opposition can support and elements that we quite stringently oppose. We oppose the increase in a person’s residency from three to four years before they can apply for citizenship. We supported the changes from two to three years based on advice that was received in relation to the government’s security package, which it tabled in the parliament. After we received those classified security briefs, that decision was seen as achieving a correct balance. There has been no justification by the government as to why it has extended the period from three to four years, apart from its argument that it allows more time for people to integrate. It is an argument that we do not accept.

We also propose to amend the lack of ministerial discretion in citizenship claims by stateless persons who have been convicted for more than five years under foreign law. Although the position that we are taking will affect only a small minority of people, we feel that the lack of ministerial discretion will exclude people who have been jailed during dictatorial rule—for example, people in Iraq who were jailed for sedition under Saddam Hussein’s government—and therefore we are proposing those changes.

One thing we will not support is a short-sighted policy that delays people from committing to our values in the citizenship ceremony. We cannot support amendments that will cause migrants to take longer to integrate into our society by keeping them out of that mainstream. Australians everywhere should be concerned about this government’s proposal to make people wait four years before they make that very important commitment to our way of life. We want all migrants to be aware of our values when they come into our country, and delaying eligibility to take the citizenship pledge to four years shows how manipulative and how out of touch the Howard government really is.

I have had the privilege since 1993 as the member for Corio of attending many citizenship ceremonies, and I have to say that they are uplifting experiences. When you attend those citizenship ceremonies you come to understand the depth of the commitment that is being made by people who take out Australian citizenship and their sincerity and that of their families in making that decision. It ought not to be a decision that is prolonged. People who are willing to make that commitment ought to be welcomed into Australian society as quickly and as practicably as possible.

Gone are my days on the Colac Council in rural Victoria when after the business of the day—which often went into the late evening or early hours of the morning—the prospective citizens were wheeled in to take the oath as an afterthought to the main council meeting. What a dreadful way to induct new citizens into mainstream Australia—as an afterthought at the back end of a local council meeting, when everybody was tired and wanted to get home and the people had been sitting around for many hours waiting to take the oath of allegiance to Australia. Thankfully that has changed. It changed because the Labor government took this issue seriously. The Howard government presumably has the same sentiments, I would hope, in relation to new migrants and people wanting to become Australian citizens.

I must commend the City of Greater Geelong for the manner in which they conduct their citizenship ceremonies on behalf of the Australian government and the Australian community. They have structured a meaningful ceremony that invites participation from not only those migrants who are seeking to take out Australian citizenship but also their families and friends. It is a joyous occasion and one which, as I have said before, when I attend, I find most uplifting.

During the week I viewed Australian Storyand anybody who saw that could not help but be uplifted by the young Geelong man, Tim McCallum, who was featured. Tim has a promising singing career and he received admission some years ago to the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts. He turned up to that particular institution for the initial induction and then decided to go down to the beach for a swim with mates. He went into a wave and into a sandbank and suffered a serious injury, which thankfully has not terminated his singing career. But Tim may live for the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Tim McCallum has been a feature of those citizenship ceremonies. He does a lot of good work around the City of Greater Geelong. Part of his good work is that he sings at our citizenship ceremonies. It is always a wonderful occasion, much appreciated by those people taking out Australian citizenship and appreciated by the Geelong community. On the floor of this House I pay tribute not only to Tim McCallum’s courage but also to the fact that he makes himself available with a deep sense of public service to the Geelong community and shares his great musical talent with people who take out Australian citizenship on that very important day of decision for them.

We are very fortunate that in the City of Greater Geelong we have the Geelong Ethnic Communities Council and a migrant resource centre which operates under its auspices, serving people from non-English-speaking backgrounds who have come to Geelong to make their living, set up their families and make their contribution to Australia. Recently I attended the 30-year celebrations of the Geelong Ethnic Communities Council, which now operates under the name of Diversitat. That was another uplifting and joyous occasion, because there the Geelong community—and well over 20 per cent of the Geelong community comes from a non-English-speaking background—celebrated a council that was formed when, I think, five or six people sat around a table and decided that it was important that the ethnic communities got together to expand their contribution to Geelong and to make sure that appropriate services were available to support the many people who had migrated to Australia and settled in Geelong. Many of those, people who did not speak English, came to Australia to work in our factories in Geelong and in other business enterprises. They did not have a command of the English language and worked assiduously to learn the language and to make a contribution.

Let me put on the public record the appreciation of the Geelong community for the vision and sacrifice of the original founders of the Geelong Ethnic Communities Council. I refer to John and George Angelovich, Joe Pavlovich, Eugene Pedzinski, Frank De Stephano and Mile Stojanovski. I want to also put on the public record the thanks of the Geelong community to Jordan Mavros, the former CEO of Diversitat, who made an enormous contribution to bringing communities together, resourcing them, supporting them and making them genuine participants in the wider multicultural community in Geelong. I pay a tribute also to Michael Martinez, the current CEO, and the staff of the migrant resource centre for the innovative ways that they continue to deliver services to Geelong’s migrant community, supported very well, I must say, by previous Labor governments and the current Bracks government. We are very fortunate that the Geelong Ethnic Communities Council is expanding. We have new groups that have just joined: the Indian, Maori, Sudanese, Nigerian and Chinese communities. Geelong is a multicultural city and we are proud of it. Let me say to the rest of this nation from the floor of this House that we have little tolerance for those who want to attack multiculturalism in our community.

I say to the Geelong Muslim community: you are most welcome in our midst. Along with the other communities that have built Geelong, you are playing your constructive part in a whole range of areas: your contribution to the economic life of Geelong, the educational life of the city and the cultural life of the city. We appreciate your involvement in the community, your membership of the Geelong Ethnic Communities Council and, indeed, your participation in the wider Geelong community.

A most fascinating element of this whole debate has been discussion at the national level and at the community level on the issue of values. I am reminded of an article that appeared in the Sunday Times on Sunday, 17 September 2006, where some comments were made by Amir Ali, chairman of John Howard’s Islamic advisory board. He laid out in this article what would be considered some of Australia’s values. I have not met Mr Amir Ali—I am sure he is a well-meaning person in making comment on these matters and when I raise this I do not disparage his contribution to the debate at all. But when I went through the list of values that had been suggested in this article in relation to what Australians should assume, I must say some alarm bells began to ring.

Here is the list, which I extracted from this article, and various statements that were made about values. Firstly, we ought to have a respect for and tolerance of diversity of opinions. I would have thought that is a value for any civilised society. Surely that is not one that we ought to be trumpeting as uniquely Australian; that is a given for anybody who calls themselves a civilised person. Another value is loyalty to Australia. I have not met anybody who has taken out the oath who has not had in his or her heart a loyalty to Australia. I have to say, I grew up in a school where we never hoisted the Union Jack, and there were some very interesting reasons why that occurred. I guarantee that everyone who went through that school is no less a citizen for not hoisting the flag and saluting it every morning. I will not go into the reasons for it—it might have had something to do with my name. However, let me say that all of the people who went through that school in the main were civilised beings. There was no question of their loyalty to Australia. We had a bit of a problem with loyalty to a foreign monarch some 10,000 miles away, but we had no problem in our loyalty to Australia.

Other values here are respect for national icons and upholding democratic values and laws. They are a given for anybody who wants to live in any civilised society anywhere in the world. Treating everyone equally is an Australian value, isn’t it? Willingness to help others in times of trouble—what is unique about that? That is not just an Australian value; that is a global, universal value—as is valuing the environment and encouraging aesthetic values such as sport, music and the arts.

I have to say: if this is the debate we are going to have on values, let us have a real debate on values. Let us have a real debate on the fundamental values of the Prime Minister and the government. I have a good value that the Prime Minister ought to put out in the public arena: telling the truth. What about the value of truthfulness? We have had the ‘never ever’ GST, ‘children overboard’, Telstra and the war in Iraq. What about the universal value of truth? Maybe members opposite would like to debate that point. While I am at it, let us get down to the absolute truth and Australian values; what about a non-core value? Perhaps we ought to have core values and non-core values, like the PM’s core and non-core promises, because then we can get a more accurate fix on whether in fact a person is a good citizen or not.

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