Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Like a lot of speakers in this debate, as I was preparing for this speech I spent quite a bit of time thinking about the many citizenship ceremonies that I have attended in my time as the member for Capricornia and what a powerful and moving thing it is to stand with the candidates for citizenship as they recite their pledge of commitment to Australia. It is always an opportunity to congratulate those people for taking the very big step in their lives of applying for and taking on Australian citizenship, and it is also a fantastic opportunity for each of us who have been born in this country to rethink what it means to be Australian citizens. It is those sentiments that go through our minds as we approach the Australian Citizenship Bill 2005 and the Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Bill 2005: how proud we are of Australian citizenship and what should be involved when newcomers to this country take that important step to join us as Australian citizens.

To the extent that the Australian Citizenship Bill 2005 facilitates the acquisition of Australian citizenship by immigrants to this country, the Labor Party welcomes and supports the measures and the bill as a whole. But there are things that we have problems with that are encompassed in our second reading amendment, which I will turn to during the course of this speech. The bills before us this evening consolidate and rewrite the Australian Citizenship Act 1948 and, as I said, much of them facilitates the taking of citizenship according to the recommendations of the Australian Citizenship Council report which was released to the government in 2000. But I have to say that, as I read the specific provisions of the bills more closely, I said to myself that the government just cannot help itself. The government has to bring politics into play in everything it does and, sadly, nothing is out of reach for this government when it comes to playing politics and ideological games. In this instance it is citizenship, and there are also aspects of national security which this bill touches on that, you would have to say, the government has treated as fair game for its political games.

In saying that, my suspicions are really triggered by the timing of this bill. As we can see, the bill is entitled the Australian Citizenship Bill 2005. Well, 2005 is almost a year ago now, and that is what has triggered my suspicions and those of the Labor Party in approaching this bill. Some of the most significant measures in this bill came out of the response to the London bombings last year. At the time, we were told that these were very urgent measures that COAG had agreed to and had signed off on to be included in Australia’s legislative framework, but here we are, well over a year down the track, and we are only just debating this bill. So the government tells us that these things are urgent, but you do have to wonder. They are urgent in the headlines of the day but, over a year down the track, we are only just having the debate about these measures.

Of course, the measure that really comes to mind when I am making that accusation against the government is the change in this bill that will require permanent residents to wait four years before they can make their application for Australian citizenship. Under the current scheme the waiting period is two years, and after the London bombings when there was that meeting of COAG it was agreed by all the premiers and the federal government that there would be a shift from two years to three years, so that applicants for Australian citizenship would have to show that they had been permanent residents for three years.

Labor agreed with that. We agreed with that on the basis that the COAG recommendation was based on security advice at the time. We accepted that the security experts in our country had advised that it was a good idea to shift from two to three years. Of course, the Labor Party was not privy to the exact details of that advice, but, when it came out of COAG that that was the recommendation, we were prepared to accept it. A year down the track, we are now confronted with a bill that makes the shift from two years to four years, and there is no suggestion from the government that this is based on any change in the security situation. We have not been given any reasons why there has been a shift away from the proposed increase from two years to three years, which Labor supported, to an increase now from two years to four years. It appears to be on the whim of the parliamentary secretary.

So, while we are very conscious that there is always a balance in these things—a balance between the desire to encourage people to take out Australian citizenship after they have spent time in our country as permanent residents, versus the security issues involved in granting Australian citizenship to applicants for that important legal status—in a situation where we are not given any reason for the jump from two to four years, we maintain our position that we think three years is appropriate. That was based on the security assessments that COAG cited in its original recommendation, and the Labor Party see no reason to change from three years up to four years, as this bill proposes—and, of course, that is canvassed in our second reading amendment. We are just not going to support what appears to be a politically motivated and short-sighted policy.

There are a number of other changes. As I have said, we have major problems with the jump from two years to four years, and that is one of the most significant changes in the bill. There are other technical changes, which I might come back to in more detail. But I turn now to one of the changes that I guess prompted me to take part in this debate on this bill—that is, the changes that affect the Maltese community in this country.

Australia has a long history of welcoming migrants from Malta, and the descendants of those migrants make up the large and very significant Maltese community that lives in Australia today. Nowhere is that community more important than in the city of Mackay, which is just to the north of my electorate of Capricornia. It is the place where I grew up, so I am very familiar with the important role that the Maltese community plays in Mackay. I must admit, though, that I did not realise just how far back the history of the Maltese community in Mackay extended. I was having a look at the Mackay Maltese Club website this afternoon and I found that, in fact, the history of the Maltese migrants in Mackay goes back to 1883, when a shipload of Maltese migrants was indentured to work in the cane fields, and they settled in the Mackay area.

Over the years, many more Maltese immigrants came and joined those original settlers in Mackay, and they really have been the backbone of the cane industry over many generations. They started out doing the hard yakka, cutting cane and working in the fields. Over the years they formed partnerships, often between family groups, and bought their own farms. They now make up 25 per cent of the Mackay region’s population. Mackay has about 125,000 residents and some 25 per cent of them are descended from those original Maltese immigrants. Growing up in the area, I was surrounded by Camilleris, Schembris, Vellas, Borgs, Galeas and all those names that people from the Mackay region associate with the Maltese community. We know that those families have made enormous contributions and continue to make enormous contributions, both in the sugar industry and in the life of the community generally.

I will go back to the bill and what it means for the Maltese community. The bill seeks to address the situation where a person has lost their Australian citizenship through the operation of section 17 of the Citizenship Act. So, where someone has taken on other citizenship and lost their Australian citizenship, this bill makes it easier for those people to regain their Australian citizenship.

The Maltese community are in a slightly different situation. In the example of Maltese migrants, their Australian-born children were deemed Australian citizens but, as their parents were Maltese born, still retained their Maltese citizenship. In order to retain Maltese citizenship, prior to 2000 the law in Malta said that these individuals had to renounce their foreign citizenship before they reached the age of 19. The cohort of Maltese who returned to Malta and renounced their Australian citizenship faced a number of hurdles in attempting to regain Australian citizenship.

This bill, as I understand it, will address the situation of those people who lost their Australian citizenship by reason of the operation of section 17, but it does not help the children people whose citizenship was renounced through the operation of section 18. So, in particular, it leaves out the children of Maltese migrants who were forced to renounce their citizenship under the law of Malta.

This was addressed in the report of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee inquiry into Australian expatriates entitled They still call Australia home: inquiry into Australian expatriates. The inquiry heard evidence from people representing the children born after their parents had renounced their Australian citizenship. This was particularly the case for those people who had returned to Malta and who were forced to renounce their citizenship as a result of the law of Malta. The Labor Party have flagged this in our second reading amendment, and I believe that we will also be moving specific amendments to deal with this situation. I would encourage the government to consider these amendments, because there seems to be no reason to discriminate between people who have lost their citizenship in those various situations.

In the time I have left I want to turn to another aspect not of this citizenship bill but of the government’s immigration policy in general—that is, the use of 457, or ‘skilled migration’, visas. These visas have become a much discussed issue in many areas of Australia, and that is certainly the case in Rockhampton. As the Labor Party has said all along, there is a place in Australia for genuine skilled migration, but the 457 system has become synonymous with rorting. There are few if any checks being conducted by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs into whether or not a real skills shortage actually exists in a particular area before granting a company access to these imported workers, and that is where I think this system of 457 visas has really fallen down. There does not appear to be the necessary rigorous assessment by the government—or, more specifically, by the department—of whether or not a skills shortage exists in the area and whether the applicant to hire 457 visa holders has made reasonable attempts to fill the position with a local worker. Often the company’s word is taken for granted by the department, leading to widespread abuse of the visa class and a lowering of workplace conditions for the workers.

As the Labor Party have said numerous times—I have to say we have been proved right on many of the occasions on which we have raised these concerns—this is all part of John Howard’s wages race to the bottom. It is part of his plan to ensure that Australia’s working conditions are peeled back and that we compete with China and India on wages, rather than skills.

We all know that it is the government’s failure to supply adequate training opportunities for Australians that has lead to the current skills shortage, and the Prime Minister came out a couple of weeks ago with his announcement of a skills package. But we know that the government’s answer to the skills shortage has always been this short-sighted and short-term reliance on imported workers.

The Prime Minister denies over and over again that the 457 visa system is being rorted. We even saw the hard cold facts revealed in Senate estimates put to the government in question time today, and they still denied that this system is ripe for exploitation. This was shown even before the estimates hearing today. The Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs admitted back in September that her department was investigating no fewer than 182 employers for alleged breaches of the 457 visa scheme.

Time and time again, Labor has brought to the House examples of 457 visa holders who have been differentially treated in the workplace, and time and time again the government returns with little more than lip service to the issue. There are hundreds of 457 visa holders—and I mean literally hundreds—working in one meatworks in Rockhampton while, five kilometres down the road, there is a meatworks operating with an almost 100 per cent—I know it is not 100 per cent but it is almost 100 per cent—local Australian workforce. You have to ask what is going on with this 457 visa system if you can have one company relying very heavily on the 457 visa to find skilled workers—or so-called skilled workers—while five kilometres down the road another company in the same industry is managing to fill their needs with local workers.

In another industry, we recently saw the example of the Filipino welders in Brisbane being paid 20 per cent less than the market rate of pay, and they were workers with insufficient English to understand safety instructions, as well as numerous other examples of 457 visa holders being underpaid and working under conditions that are unacceptable for Australian workers.

This issue needs to be resolved by this government. We are all aware of the necessity of utilising foreign skills in specific niche areas where those skills genuinely cannot be found in Australia or parts of Australia. But, when it comes down to the rights of overseas workers being violated or when the use of the workers is a tool to bring down Australian workers’ wages and conditions, the system needs reviewing—and it needs reviewing quickly.

As I said, this legislation largely has Labor’s support to the extent that the measures allow citizenship for individuals who lost it and for those who did not have access to it due to previous dual citizenship restrictions. We also support the measures that facilitate the obtaining of Australian citizenship by appropriate applicants. But we do reject the use of Australian citizenship as a political pawn by the government whenever it feels the need to create a diversion or to play wedge politics. As I said at the beginning of my remarks, Australian citizenship is a source of great pride for those of us who are privileged enough to hold it. It is also a source of enormous pride for those of us who participate in citizenship ceremonies for newcomers. Actually it is not true to say ‘newcomers’; as the previous speaker, the member for Shortland mentioned, it is often people who have been in this country for many decades who take that step. But whenever that step is taken, it is to be congratulated and welcomed. We reject any attempts by this government to use citizenship in the practice of wedge politics.

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