Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Immigration) Share this | Hansard source

We have a very simple amendment before the chamber to fix a problem which has arisen for the Maltese community. The government has acknowledged that one section of the Maltese community who lost their Australian citizenship—they and their children—should be allowed to regain it. In a parallel situation, the government acknowledges that it is appropriate to let back in another section of the Maltese community who were forced to renounce Australian citizenship, but it does not want to do the same for their children. The government’s argument is that their children do not have a sufficient connection to Australia. Labor believes that the connection between children and their parents is as close as a connection can get.

This situation does not affect a lot of people, and it is something which the Maltese community has been crying out for for some time. It is something that should have attracted some bipartisanship in the parliament. The Labor Party offered that, if the government want to make this amendment theirs, we will grant leave for them to vary it in whatever way they want to. What we have here is simply sensible public policy. There appears to be no national security concern or anything like that; it simply appears to be a case where the government have drafted the legislation in this way and they are sticking to their guns no matter what the merits of the case.

In the Main Committee the member for Prospect and the member for Gorton made a compelling case as to why the cries of the Maltese community in Australia should be heard, as to why this is to the betterment of Australia and as to why it is really not too long a stretch: if you are looking at whether someone has a significant connection to Australia, the connection between parents and their children is not a bad one to start with.

Question put:

That the amendment (Mr Burke’s) be agreed to.

There are two deeply offensive parts to the amendments that this House is dealing with. After the London bombings we had the government putting around the press gallery—and it was published everywhere—that there was a 10-point antiterrorism plan. One of those issues was that citizenship should move from two years to three years. That information went out to the gallery, to the nation and to the world after all the leaders of the governments in Australia had been given the best security information that was available and the best security briefings by ASIO. They decided that the balance should be struck at three years.

But then briefings were given by someone else—we can only assume that it was Mark Textor. Briefings were given by someone else who had nothing to do with national security. They said, ‘Labor’s agreed to three years for Australian citizenship, so we’d better go one step further to make sure Labor disagrees.’ They went one step further: they went to four years. Make no mistake, our reason for refusing to go to four years is that we will not go against what was unanimously agreed in the counter-terrorism plan. It might be good enough for the government to say that all the leaders of all the governments in Australia can agree on something but if a pollster says the parliamentary secretary ought to do something different then it will be switched. That might be good enough for them, but we will not support an extension to four years for the waiting time for Australian citizenship. It is a careful balance. You have to get that balance right and you should base that on the security information, not on the polling information.

Something else came out in the course of debate. When this debate was adjourned to the Main Committee, I offered on the floor of the House that, if the government wanted to adjust this amendment, we would grant leave to adjust it. The government decided not to bother doing that. We now have an amendment before us which says that a limited group of people who are classified under this amendment as stateless persons will be prohibited from getting Australian citizenship if they have been convicted—this is under amendment (47)—of an offence under Australian law, or a foreign law, for which the person has been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least five years. I have no problem, if someone is being jailed overseas, for that to ring alarm bells and send an alert to the minister. I do not mind it being deferred to ministerial discretion. But I am disgusted that Australian citizenship, of all things, will be deferred to a foreign power—that if a foreign power has decided to imprison someone for five years then the Australian government loses control of Australian citizenship. It is for a limited class of people.

This government has outsourced many things in its time, but I never thought we would outsource Australian citizenship. If we were going to outsource it, I never thought we would pick the worst regimes in the world. Someone who fits the classification for a stateless person under this amendment could have been imprisoned in the cell next door to Nelson Mandela for being an antiapartheid activist. This legislation says that that person is prohibited—there is no discretion at all—from gaining Australian citizenship. Someone could have been imprisoned by Saddam Hussein, and the Australian minister will not be able to make them an Australian citizen because we have deferred that power to the authority of a tyrant. Yesterday we got a report about giving him money; today we get legislation to give him control of citizenship.

It is disgraceful for us to be in this situation, where it has been pointed out to the government and they could not be bothered making the amendment. They could not be bothered saying that Australian citizenship ought to be one of the things the should be in the control of Australia. As I said, I have no problems at all saying that this should ring an alarm bell, that this should give an alert, but the final decision should lie with the Australian minister. There will be many times when I do not like the way the government exercise their discretion. But if it is a choice between whether the discretion goes to an Australian minister or to the people who locked up Aung San Suu Kyi, I will pick the Australian minister. It should give rise to a discretion, but it is unforgivable for this government—for the first time in our history—to be saying that a foreign power gets control of anyone’s Australian citizenship.

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