Ann Corcoran (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the Australian Citizenship Bill 2005 and the Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Bill 2005. The main purpose of these bills is to rewrite and consolidate the old Australian Citizenship Act 1948. This act has been amended many times since then. Back in 1993-94 the Joint Standing Committee on Migration conducted an inquiry into the act. One of the conclusions of that inquiry was that the act was cumbersome and dated and needed to be rewritten in clear language. The second purpose of these bills is to address problems that some people have as a result of old rules about dual citizenship. The third purpose is to increase the waiting period from the current two years to four years, once government mooted amendments are in place.

These bills are here before us at the same time that a discussion paper about Australian citizenship, issued by the government, is in circulation. That discussion paper raises a number of issues that I want to talk about a bit later. These bills do not directly cross any of the issues raised in the discussion paper, but they are related and I guess that in the ideal world those issues would have been addressed in these bills. However, I am not suggesting that these bills be delayed any further, given that they have been lying on the table for 12 months already.

At Federation in 1901, Australian citizenship as a legal status did not exist. There is no mention of citizenship in the Australian Constitution. Australia’s population then consisted of British subjects who were permanently residing in Australia, British subjects who were temporarily here and ‘aliens’. The legal status of Australian ‘citizen’ came into effect on 26 January 1949 under the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948. The title of this act changed later to the Australian Citizenship Act 1948.

What is citizenship? It is useful to set it out. The preamble to the Australian Citizenship Act states:

Australian citizenship represents formal membership of the community of the Commonwealth of Australia;

and Australian citizenship is a common bond, involving reciprocal rights and obligations, uniting all Australians, while respecting their diversity;

and Persons granted Australian citizenship enjoy these rights and undertake to accept these obligations

by pledging loyalty to Australia and its people, and

by sharing their democratic beliefs, and

by respecting their rights and liberties, and

by upholding and obeying the laws of Australia.

Those words are very familiar to all of us who go to citizenship ceremonies. It is fascinating now to read the speech that went with the introduction of the 1948 bill. I am indebted to the Parliamentary Library for this information. The Australian Citizenship Act 1948 was proclaimed to commence operation from 26 January 1949. The introduction of the 1948 act took place in the context of establishing Australian citizenship for the first time, while maintaining the status of ‘British subject’ for Australians. The minister who introduced the bill said:

The bill is not designed to make an Australian any less a British subject, but to help him express his pride in citizenship of this great country. … To say that one is an Australian is, of course, to indicate beyond all doubt that one is British; but to claim to be of the British race does not make it clear that one is an Australian. The time has come for Australia and the other dominions to recognize officially and legally their maturity as members of the British Commonwealth by the passage of separate citizenship laws. Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to introduce this bill that will enable Australia to proclaim its own national citizenship …

The link between Australian and British citizenship was finally severed in 1984. It is interesting to note these words from nearly 60 years ago and to realise how much we have changed since then. At this time when we are talking about citizenship and values, some people are worried that the world is changing too fast. It would be cynical of me to suggest that some people are actually encouraging us to be worried and fear to change—but that is an issue for another day. We have moved well away from seeing ourselves as an offshoot of Britain. At that time, the almost cringing attitude was probably a reflection of where the community saw itself, but it certainly is not how we see ourselves today. Today, a person can become an Australian citizen in a number of ways: by birth, by descent, by adoption or by grant of citizenship. It is the last method of becoming an Australian citizen that we are discussing today.

The bill, which was originally put on the Notice Paper more than 12 months ago, had a change to amend the waiting period for citizenship from two years to three years. We were told at the time that this was because of security concerns. I understand that those concerns were discussed at COAG and that COAG agreed to a 10-point plan, which included increasing the waiting period for citizenship from two years to three years. That was 12 months ago. Now we have an amendment to the bill, proposed by the government, that the waiting period be increased to four years. I will make two points about this. Firstly, it has taken 12 months to get this bill to the point of being debated. One really has to question the validity of the argument that the period should be changed from two years to three years on security grounds if a delay of 12 months is of no consequence. It is worth noting that, in the intervening 12 months, approximately 117,000 people became Australian citizens—people who would have had to wait, for security reasons, had this bill been dealt with when it was first mooted.

The second point worth making is the process, or lack of process, in the move to four years. As I said, we have been told that originally the government had security concerns which it took to COAG. COAG agreed to the 10-point plan, which included increasing the waiting period to three years. Now we are being asked to support increasing the period to four years, but there has been no discussion or consultation about this and no reasons offered for this latest move.

I have to ask: why this change and why now? We are in a period of debate about Australian values and discussion about rules of citizenship. If you were a cynic, you would question the real motive behind this change. There has been no reason put forward for the move from three to four years. I find it hard to accept the validity of the argument of security for the move from two to three years, given the long delay in getting this bill to the point of being debated. I cannot support the move to four years, given the lack of argument for that move.

One of the changes in this bill which I think is good allows citizenship to be restored and granted to many people who were forced to renounce it or who lost it as a result of the old legislation. Originally, anyone wanting to take out Australian citizenship had to renounce citizenship of other countries. That requirement was dropped in 1986. In 2002, section 17 was repealed, which meant that Australian citizens taking out citizenship of another country did not automatically lose their Australian citizenship. Amendments made at the time allowed those who had lost their citizenship to regain it if they met certain conditions. Those conditions included a continuing and close association with Australia, an intention to continue to live in Australia for three years or an intention to commence living in Australia within three years. Unfortunately, the condition about living in Australia stopped a number of people resuming their Australian citizenship. It meant that those who took out citizenship in another country in 2002 or later were able to hold dual citizenship—that is, their initial Australian citizenship plus another—even though they do not intend to live in Australia in the near future. However, those who took out citizenship of another country before 2002 have lost Australian citizenship and many cannot resume it. It is clear from evidence that was given to the Senate’s Legal and Constitutional References Committee that a number of these people do not even realise they have lost their Australian citizenship. This bill takes away that conflict. This bill allows those who lost citizenship through the old section 17 to resume that citizenship. The only condition now is that applicants must be of good character.

The second group of people with issues that are addressed by this bill are children of Australian citizens who return to the country of origin, when the children later renounce Australian citizenship. The classic example, as you have heard other speakers talk about, is many members of the Maltese community or, more particularly, children born in Australia to parents who came here from Malta. As they were born in Australia, under Australian citizenship laws these children became Australian citizens. As children of Maltese-born parents, they were also automatically deemed to be Maltese citizens. Some of the parents decided to return to Malta, taking their children with them. Before 2000, Maltese law required such persons to renounce any foreign citizenship by the time they were 19 years of age if they were to retain their Maltese citizenship. Maltese citizenship at the time was virtually essential for the education, social welfare and economic benefits it offered, so most of these now young adults did renounce their Australian citizenship. These people lost their citizenship under section 18—that is, they were deemed to have renounced their Australian citizenship rather than having lost citizenship by acquiring citizenship of another country. The original bill did not extend the same, more relaxed rules to those who renounced their citizenship as it did to those who simply lost their citizenship. I understand that recent amendments that were put forward by the government mean that both sets of people will now be able to regain their Australian citizenship if they pass a test of good character, and this is a welcome amendment.

Again in the original bill there was provision for a person to be denied citizenship if that person had served time in prison. The original bill gave the minister no discretion and he or she had to refuse an application if that person had spent time in prison. That provision is very short-sighted, and I hope it was put in there without too much thought. I understand that it is now being removed by an amendment the government is proposing. But, just in case, let me spell out the problem with that particular provision. If passed into law, this provision means that we cannot accept as an Australian citizen anyone who has spent time in prison, regardless of where that sentence was served or why. I am not suggesting that a serial murderer should be given Australian citizenship—indeed, that person would presumably be barred by the good character test—but the provision, unless amended, will affect a person who has served time on trumped-up charges in a country where the reigning authority is brutal—for instance, Iraq. It is crazy to let this provision pass as it first appeared. We should not let another country’s laws decide who will become Australian citizens. We must reserve that privilege for ourselves. We must decide the criteria for Australian citizenship.

The final aspect of this bill I want to discuss is the provision which says that the minister must refuse an application for citizenship if that person has an adverse security assessment by ASIO. It is not clear to me just what information the minister gets when a person has an adverse security assessment. It is not at all clear that the person concerned gets any details of that assessment, and therefore they are not in a position to challenge that assessment. This smacks of Big Brother. Whilst we must protect ourselves from security risks, we must also make sure that proper processes are in place to ensure that appropriate assessments are made and that this does not become a backdoor way of denying citizenship.

I referred earlier to a discussion paper that has been issued by the government about Australian citizenship. That paper asks us to address four questions: about whether or not we should introduce a formal test for aspiring citizens, about how important knowledge of Australia is for an Australian citizen, about the level of English language required to participate as an Australian, and about the importance of a commitment to Australian values and way of life of aspiring citizens. At the moment, those applying for Australian citizenship have to have been here for two years and have to be committed to staying here or at least maintaining a close association with Australia. Applicants go through an interview process and are required to demonstrate a basic capacity to understand and speak English—enough to be able to answer simple questions about themselves. Applicants are given information about Australia: our values, our history, how our system of government works and, of course, about the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship.

The discussion paper canvasses the benefits of a formal test to ensure applicants know what our values are, know something of our history and how we do things, and can speak and understand English. In the ideal world every person living in Australia would be able to read and write in English fluently. And, by the way, it would not do us any harm to be able to communicate confidently in other languages either, but that is another issue. The reality is that not even all Australian-born Australians can read and write fluently.

The reality also is that many migrants in this country have contributed enormously to our economic development and our quality of life despite not having good English and, in many cases, having very little English. Many migrants who came here in the postwar period never learnt much English. They did, however, make sure their children learnt English and many of them were very determined that their children got the very best education. This education often extended well beyond the compulsory schooling age. They were determined that their children would have opportunities that they did not have. They were determined that their children finished their education with training and a qualification that allowed them to enter the workforce and so contribute to our society. There is no way we can say that this cohort of migrants has not contributed in a very positive way to our society; but would they have passed a rigorous English language test? Maybe, but maybe not. The real test that is needed, if one can be devised, is a determination to contribute.

My experience tells me that most migrants have come here in the first place because they want to get on, and that determination to do well is all that is needed in the first instance. Being able to communicate properly in English is obviously something everyone in the country should be able to do. I am just not convinced that the inability to do so, particularly if someone has not been here very long, is a reason, in itself, to bar a person from citizenship.

At the same time as the government is talking about the need for everyone to know English, we see it slashing funds to the migrant English language program. The logic of this is lost on me. We either care about people learning English or we do not. We cannot talk about English being so important that someone may be barred from being an Australian because they do not have a good grasp of the language on the one hand and, on the other, take away funding of the very programs that help newly arrived people learn our language. This action makes me query the real reason behind the implied push by this government to introduce formal testing for those applying for citizenship.

I want to finish on the matter of values. All of a sudden we are talking about Australian values as though there is no tomorrow. The discussion taking place in some quarters is very insulting and offensive. I have heard people in this place talk about our unique values, as though no-one else shares our values or has similar values. If we are asked what our values are we get answers like decency, tolerance, respect for others and even the dreaded word ‘mateship’. I heard Dame Edna say, just this week, that as far as she was concerned we need only one value: niceness. She is probably right. None of these values is unique to Australia or Australians. We do not have a monopoly on values. It is offensive to other cultures and to other countries to think or say that we do, or to act as though we do. Good values are important; they should be at the base of everything we do. It does not do us any harm to remember a few of these values when we are drafting legislation.

It is important that we are all reminded of our values from time to time. It is a useful thing to take advantage of a citizenship ceremony to reflect for a minute on our values; to remind our new citizens, and ourselves, of our values. This is a long way from saying that we need to present applicants for citizenship with a test on values. Just think of the absurdity of the concept. Think about what the test might be trying to achieve. Is the purpose of the test to identify the people we do not want here because they are bad eggs? Would a test of values do this job? I do not think so. That is what police checks and character tests are for.

Is the purpose to tell applicants that these are Australian values? This is probably a more useful objective but a test is not the way to do it. It is far better to give this information to people as they arrive and as they apply for citizenship. The clear message should be that these are the traits that Australians hold dear and that are important to our way of life. The message should not be that these are the things that we suspect you, the new arrival, have never heard of, that you had better start learning and that there will be a test in due course.

One trait or value that I admire is generosity. The attitude behind this discussion paper is not one of generosity. It paints us as a mean-spirited people; a community prepared to ride on the back of the hard work done by a generation of migrants but not one prepared to share our good fortune with anyone else. It paints us as a people scared of anyone who is not just like us. This is a narrow, mean way of looking at the world. It is also short-sighted. We are capable of much better and I call on the government to think again about how we apply the values we ascribe to ourselves.

See this speech in context