Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to follow the member for Hindmarsh, who has a large part in the rich tapestry of our country and represents an electorate with many recent arrivals to, and recent citizens of, our country. That is quite different to my electorate, I suspect, in the amount of people born overseas. I think the member for Hindmarsh said his electorate had well over 20 per cent; I think mine has well under 10 per cent, which probably reflects the differences between our seats.

I rise to support the amendments to the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Test Review and Other Measures) Bill 2009 put forward by our shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, the member for Murray—in particular the ministerial discretion aspects of those amendments. There was much I agreed with in the member for Hindmarsh’s speech. I think it is very important that we always acknowledge the importance of our citizenship, the strength and support it has within the community and the desire of so many people in other countries to become Australian citizens.

We all have the pleasure in this place of attending citizenship ceremonies regularly. They are great events, I am sure all members would agree, where people have a genuine sense of excitement that they have become members of the Australian club, I guess you could say. It is probably the most sought-after club in the world, because we have the best country in the world. We live in freedom, with liberty. We have a parliamentary democracy, which largely works well, except for about an hour and a half or two hours every sitting day.

We are a successful and much sought-after place to live and I think that is a credit to us. It is a credit to our country. It also is a reminder that we should always protect membership of our club. We should always ensure that those who seek to join it are doing so for the right reasons. We should not weaken the standards that we have set to a degree where we are weakening the value of the citizenship that they seek. That is a very important thing that we should remember.

One of the great changes in our country over the last 10 or so years—and I give credit in large part to the former Prime Minister for this—is the re-engagement with the value of being an Australian. Look at the celebration that we have now on Australia Day compared to what it was some years ago, when I was a lot younger. Today, it is a great thing to see so many local barbeques and local celebrations—on Australia Day morning, in particular—leading to us rushing around our electorates and seeking to be at as many of them as we possibly can. That is a great reminder of what it is to be an Australian.

It has been a great change in our culture in recent years that we now spend Australia Day remembering. We do not change the public holiday—we celebrate it on the day, on 26 January. That is a great thing and a great change in our cultural experience. It also gets back to the absolute need to protect the strength and value of our citizenship. We should always value our citizenship at the highest possible level. We should not make changes here in this place or outside this place which devalue or rip away at the absolute underlying strength of our citizenship.

The mistake that this minister is making in this bill, and the mistake that we are seeking to help rectify with our amendments, is that the minister is seeking to codify things which should really be in his discretion. It may be ‘his’ or ‘her’ discretion but in this case it is a ‘his’. I am sure it will be a ‘her’ in the future. The minister appears to want to set very tight black-letter law requirements around how athletes, in particular, and offshore overseas workers can get access to citizenship. There has been for some time the ability for ministers to—with their discretion—exclude the provisions and allow athletes in particular to join. Of course there have been some famous examples of that, with athletes becoming Australian citizens and winning gold medals and winning tennis tournaments. I think probably the most famous one recently was Jelena Dokic. We have given athletes the opportunity to represent Australia even though they might not necessarily have met the full requirements of the act.

The mistake the government is making here is that it is potentially weakening those standards. Certainly, the minister needs discretion. There are always examples where the rules do not apply appropriately and the minister should be able to look at the facts and make a change. But if we codify this too much we risk reducing the standard or standards of Australian citizenship, which I think is a mistake.

I guess that is our overall criticism of the government’s approach to citizenship and immigration at this stage. They are weakening the protections that we put on becoming an Australian or getting access to Australia. We have a very proud record in this country, as the member for Hindmarsh rightly pointed out, over the last 200 years—over the last 60 years in particular—of accepting people from a wide range of places. We are probably second to none in accepting people who, for one reason or another, have fled from where they were living: whether they were from post Word War II Europe, where they sought the opportunities given by Australia, whether they were from countries affected by war or whether they were the many refugees from Germany who sought a better life and were able to have a better life here. We should never be ashamed of the great tapestry that has been provided to this country. We should never be ashamed that we have accepted this. It is part of our culture and part of who we are today. However, we should equally be very careful that we do not weaken the standards to the point where we are becoming an easy or ‘soft touch’, which would threaten the security of our country and the great liberty that we are able to live in. That is the balance the government needs to ensure they get right, across the realm of immigration policy.

We are always—in this place, at a political level—going to disagree on issues. Immigration is one of those issues over the last 10 years which has really splintered the parliament and splintered Australian society. Yesterday we saw the reaction of the Prime Minister when he was asked questions about immigration policies and so forth. It is a mistake that people are not allowed to express genuine concern for the way a policy is operating. It is incumbent on us to make sure the government is held to account, because we have two major responsibilities in this place. The first is the management of the national economy. The second is the defence of the realm, the defence of Australia—ensuring that Australia is safe and ensuring that our security is kept paramount. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support, who is at the table, knows, that defence of Australia comes with costs and it comes with difficult decisions. We need to ensure that, in this place, the government makes those difficult decisions appropriately. At the moment, our criticism would be that they are not.

In summing up, the amendment moved by the shadow spokesman, the member for Murray, on these matters really does articulate our concern with the government’s direction on this bill, in particular in relation to athletes and offshore workers. We think the minister should have the ability to make decisions with discretion. The minister should rethink these provisions in particular, because ultimately we must do everything we possibly can to protect the strength and great value of citizenship in this country. It is the very thing that we stand for so much, the very thing that makes our country the great country that it is today, the best country in the world.

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