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

In his speech, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship gave a summary of the government’s position on the Australian Citizenship Bill 2006 but did not really go to the question that is currently before the House. The question before the House is not that the bill be read a second time; it is that the amendments be agreed to. It is worth noting, in support of resolving the question that the amendments to the bill that went to the Senate be agreed to, what those amendments actually were. When this bill went through the House of Representatives, it contained a section which should have been unthinkable, and that was for a very small class of people—those who had been defined under the legislation as being stateless people. If they had spent five years inside a prison within Australia, they would be prohibited from becoming Australian citizens.

That part of the legislation is not controversial, but it also said that if they had spent the same period of time in prison in any country of the world they would be prohibited from having Australian citizenship. Labor argued the whole way through this—and I do not blame the minister opposite, because it was his predecessor who was responsible for the sloppy drafting—that you could outsource many things but you should never outsource Australian citizenship and you certainly should never outsource Australian citizenship to the worst regimes in the world. The government refused to amend that bill while it was in this House, so the House of Representatives of Australia was actually saying—and I have always acknowledged that it is for a limited class of people—that those people would be prohibited from taking up Australian citizenship not because they had done anything contrary to Australian law but because they may well have broken the laws that enforced apartheid in South Africa. They may well have rebelled against the Hussein regime in Iraq. They may well have been part of the support group of Aung San Suu Kyi, in Burma. They could have been imprisoned for the requisite period of time for any of those reasons, and the Australian government minister would have had no right, no discretion at all, to allow that person to be an Australian citizen.

I have never been that impressed by the way the government exercises its discretion, but I certainly believe the minister should have a discretion in those instances. The motion that is before the House now is not about the entire bill. It is not about all the issues that the minister just went through. The motion before the House now is about an amendment that should have been carried in the House of Representatives the first time round. Fortunately, however, the amendment passed the Senate. We now have amendments which say that if that limited class of people were imprisoned by a foreign power then that would be highlighted to the minister and the minister would have a discretion. The bill is better for that change. Labor supports that amendment, and we are happy to support the amendments before the House.

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