Bernie Ripoll (Oxley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Industry, Infrastructure and Industrial Relations) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Committee for the opportunity to say a few words on these very important bills, the Australian Citizenship Bill 2005 and the Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Bill 2005. These are very important bills which have been a long time coming. Before I get into the substance and some of the issues related to the bills, I want to note that there has been a lot of talk in this place about security and security issues—particularly in relation to citizenship. I want to make the point that the citizenship bill was first brought forward in November 2005, but we are only debating it now.

A whole year has gone by during which the government has made issues over citizenship, security matters and security checking for individuals. In that period of time, as we found out in estimates only days ago, 117,208 people have been processed for citizenship under the old system. We have a dichotomy. On the one hand, the government has been saying how urgent and important it is to ensure citizenship checking and security checks so that only people of good character are allowed into this country. On the other hand, 12 months have gone by and 117,000-plus people have been allowed in under the old system. I just do not think it is good enough that the government has allowed this legislation to sit for so long.

There might be an explanation in the fact that the government often uses important measures like this as a political tool. That is what offends me: this bill is being used, in part, as a political tool. It is very important legislation which is supported by the Labor Party because it does address a lot of essential things. There are a lot of deficiencies in the current system that needed to be looked at. But we have seen, in the past 12 months, 117,000 people processed without ASIO being able to legally refuse someone’s citizenship application based on any knowledge of a security risk that they might have posed. I find that move by this government almost bizarre. Labor believes that Australia’s national security and citizenship laws are far too important for the government to have made the decision, on the whim of a parliamentary secretary, to delay this legislation.

I also want to make the point that citizenship confers on people a great honour and a great privilege but, in itself, does not protect anybody from a would-be terrorist. In itself, it does not do anything like that. Citizenship can give us a better understanding of who the person is, but it does not necessarily protect us, as we found out in the United Kingdom, where terrorists were actually British citizens—and not just British citizens but natural-born British citizens. We found that in Australia would-be terrorists, or people who potentially planned to commit a number of crimes, were Australian citizens and were born here. Of course it is no different in the United States, where terrorists and would-be terrorists are of American citizenship or of American descent. So citizenship in itself is not a protection mechanism, but I believe it is a very important mechanism as to how we define ourselves and a great honour to be bestowed on anybody.

I concur with the member for Capricornia when she spoke briefly about the pride that people feel at the many citizenship ceremonies we attend—as I am sure you do, Mr Deputy Speaker Jenkins. The room is always filled with many smiling people taking great pride in becoming Australians. They do it with a great sense of purpose, duty and responsibility, and you would be hard-pressed to find anybody who does not do it for the right reasons. Of course we need to be vigilant and of course we need to ensure that the people we give our citizenship to are people of good character. There is no doubt about that. That is something that the Labor Party supports. In fact, I think citizenship is so important that we need to get it right, and this bill comes very close to getting it right. But there are a couple of areas that I will talk about in a moment where I think we may not have got it quite right.

The citizenship legislation also gives us an opportunity to talk a little about what citizenship means to different people. It certainly means something very important to me. I became a citizen in 1974 and have since relinquished my previous citizenship. It is something that is very important to me and my family and to my parents, as I know it is to everybody else who takes it on. You feel this new sense of loyalty. You feel this new sense of pride that Australia really is your country, that this really is your home. It does not mean, of course, that you ever forget where you came from or that somehow that diminishes who you are as a person, your heritage or your culture, but it does mean that you feel much more a part of Australian society and much more a part of our culture, of our ways.

There has been a lot of discussion in the community and in parliament about testing people, about requiring them to do certain things, some of which are good and some of which are not so good. But they certainly are important. It would not be easy to find an equal platform on which to define just what Australian citizenship or being Australian means to everybody. There would be a whole range of definitions, a whole range of different views. I think there would be less agreement on defining what it is to be Australian than there would be on defining what it is to be un-Australian, because we hear it so often. It is bandied around this place almost as a daily word used to describe a whole range of things—anything we find distasteful, anything we do not agree with. If somebody in the community who perhaps does not look Australian, even if they are and even if they are a fourth generation Australian, suddenly commits a some horrible act or something we find disgusting, then they are described as un-Australian. We find that all over the place, but that in itself does us very little justice in here or in trying to deliver the exact message to people who may want to become Australian citizens.

There are things that all of us could probably agree are un-Australian. I would say they are ‘un’ anybody’s culture—un-European, un-American, un-British. For example, I would agree that the riots we saw in Sydney not so long ago were un-Australian—not a nice thing. If they took place in the United States, people over there might say that that behaviour was un-American.

What is important here is that, through our laws, citizenship is given to the right people, to people who actually want to take it up for the right reasons, and that the government does everything in its power to support them. The government needs to take its role seriously, and it is more than just the role of setting down a set of rules and guidelines as to what citizenship is about. It really is also a role of supporting those people and giving them the tools they need to become fully-participating Australians.

One way the government could provide those tools, of course, is through the Adult Migrant English Program, which actually helps them learn the English language. I agree with many people that being taught English as part of living in Australia is very important. It is important to how you get on in life here. It is important to your prospects of obtaining a job and to assimilating to whatever level you desire with the people around you and becoming part of your own area, part of the new culture and part of this new entity that people coming to Australia experience.

I have many Vietnamese migrants in my electorate, along with many others—Chinese, Spanish, Italian and a whole range of people. I always say to them it is important to learn English. It is important to teach your children the new ways. It is important for you to learn the new ways, but it is just as important not to forget the old ways. It is important not to forget your own language, your own culture, your own food and where you come from. I think the two have to be married together. If I could define anything about what really being Australian is, that is it—being able to accept others for what they are and where they have come from. In this parliament we have a number of people who were not born in Australia; I think it is one of the great strengths of this parliament and our democracy that we are adult enough and mature enough as a nation to accept that people who are Australian but may not have been born here can be and are loyal to Australia. I think that is an important point to make. It certainly is a very important point for many people I know.

But the government has got it wrong in a couple of areas—firstly, the extension of the waiting period for citizenship from two to four years. We supported the recommendation by COAG, which was based on some classified security information, that the waiting period should be extended from two to three years, and that would be the right number. That would allow for the right processes to take place and we support that, but we do not think it is right to make people wait four years. Basically you are delaying the opportunity for people to fully participate in our society. And the government can give us no good reason for it. There is no explanation; there is no justification. It is just an abstract number pulled out of the air. If there were some security analysis or some sort of evidence brought forward that said changing it from two to four years is better than changing it from two to three years then perhaps we could support it, but we cannot support that part of this legislation because it is no good. Three years is the right time to have the security checks and to ensure that people have the right access to the tools and mechanisms provided by government so they can fully participate and make the right decision about becoming a citizen.

If you have made that commitment to Australia, I am sure that you would like to become a citizen after 12 months. We have put a hurdle there. We have said, ‘No, you have to wait.’ We have agreed that you should have to wait three years. Three years is a long time if a person has made a commitment to this country. Given all the other rules and checks that are in place, three years is the right time. Four years is wrong. The government has got it wrong and it cannot give us a good reason. It should just review it and make it three years.

The other thing is that the government needs to support people and provide them with the right tools. That should be done through English language programs. The government talks and plays at political point scoring on the value of migrants learning English. That is fine. I agree also that it is very helpful to migrants, but give them the tools. Give them the programs. Make it happen. I think something that indicates some of the problems with the government’s approach to citizenship in this bill—and, as I said earlier, it is used more often than not as a political tool or a political wedge—is that the government has actually cut back on funding for the Adult Migrant English Program. In fact, it has cut funding by nearly $11 million. That is a lot of money to cut out of a program that was not quite adequate as it stood before the funding was cut.

The evidence is in the results: currently only 11 per cent of the 36,000 AMEP students exit with functional level 3 English. Eleven per cent is pretty low. I will not necessarily criticise the system as to why it is so low, but I will say that obviously more effort needs to be made—perhaps flexibility and teaching method issues need to be examined. There must be a better way to ensure a better figure than just 11 per cent. Only 53 per cent complete the maximum number of hours of tuition, which is 510 hours. That also needs improvement. More money needs to be invested. Only 36 per cent actually finish the program. There is a whole range of deficiencies with the old system. That is why we support a better system, but in this new legislation there are a number of areas which we believe are still deficient, particularly the Adult Migrant English Program, and also the change of the waiting period from two to four years. The government should really look closely as what it has on the table.

Labor support these bills, but we note the lengthy time it took to bring them forward. The politicisation of citizenship is wrong, and these bills should come about for the right reasons. There has been no commitment from the government to improve the Adult Migrant English Program, and it is a very important that that program be improved. The extension of the waiting period from two to four years has no justification. However, these bills need to go ahead. They will go ahead and they will get Labor’s support, but the government ought to be on notice that, when it comes to these things, they are not the only people who have some right to views on citizenship and how it affects migrants and the Australian community alike.

Debate (on motion by Mr Neville) adjourned.

See this speech in context