Laurie Ferguson (Reid, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Multicultural Affairs and Settlement Services) Share this | Hansard source

The person interjecting at the moment should bear in mind that if we did a correlation around the number of boats over the last 15 years we would find that there is no connection necessarily between legislation and the numbers of people coming to this country. A more important factor is what is occurring in a number of countries around this earth. Clearly that is the situation right now. We see daily reports from Afghanistan about the increased authority and success of the Taliban to the point where, in the paper yesterday, a leading US military source said that they are losing the war. These are the factors that push demand; it is not about the laws in this country.

In turning to the bill before us, the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Test Review and Other Measures) Bill 2009, I am very impressed that the opposition spokesperson, who is at the table, sits around getting very excited about a wholesale attack on our border protection and then does not want any response to it! The government wants the pathway to Australian citizenship to be a robust process—one that involves active learning about citizenship and that empowers our new citizens with knowledge about this country, our people, our traditions and our laws. The government believes that the citizenship test can play an important role in a migrant’s journey to Australian citizenship.

The bill seeks to implement the recommendations of the Australian Citizenship Test Review Committee that were agreed to by the government and that require legislative change. Senator Hanson-Young criticised amendments to the bill which were accepted by the Senate. The amendments will ensure that a person with a permanent or enduring incapacity, regardless of the cause of the incapacity and who, as a result of that incapacity, is not capable of understanding the nature of the application or does not understand English or the responsibilities and privileges of citizenship will be exempt from taking a citizenship test. These amendments will ensure that the most vulnerable and disadvantaged citizenship applicants will have a legitimate pathway to citizenship.

In addition, the bill proposes to amend the act to streamline the citizenship application process. This is in response to the review committee’s observation that the current process of multiple steps is inefficient for clients and the department itself. The other proposed amendment contained in this bill concerns applicants for citizenship by conferral who are under the age of 18. Currently the act allows any person under the age of 18 to be eligible for Australian citizenship by conferral. The amendments in this bill propose that the policy requirement that applicants under the age of 18 must be permanent residents to be eligible for citizenship by conferral be given the full weight of the law and leave no room for doubt as to how this provision is to be applied. The amendments will ensure the integrity and consistency of the citizenship and migration programs and provide clarity as to how the law is to be applied.

On 7 September 2009, in response to a number of organisations and individuals, the government circulated amendments to this bill. The amendments sought to introduce special residence requirements for a small, and I stress ‘small’, group of people in special—and I stress ‘special’—circumstances who have been significantly disadvantaged by the current requirement for eligibility for Australian citizenship. After the circulation of the proposed amendments to the Senate, concerns were raised with the minister that the proposed amendments had limited application. It was decided that the proposed amendments could be enhanced to provide access to a special residence requirement which allowed for a reduced period of residence for a broader group of people engaged in activities beneficial to Australia—rather than limiting it to people who may require citizenship to represent Australia at international events. The revised government amendments at schedule 2 of the bill provide for a special residence requirement for, firstly, persons seeking to engage in activities that are of benefit to Australia and, secondly, certain persons engaged in particular kinds of work requiring regular travel outside Australia. These revised government amendments will enable certain persons seeking to engage in activities that are of benefit to Australia and the Australian people and those engaged in particular kinds of work requiring regular travel outside Australia to be eligible to become Australian citizens. These provisions aim to provide flexibility for those who need to be an Australian citizen in a shorter time frame to engage in specified activities that are of benefit to Australia while ensuring that such applicants have a close and continuing connection with Australia through a longer period of permanent residency and a requirement to be ordinarily resident of Australia throughout the two-year period before application.

The opposition proposed that the minister should have a personal, non-delegable power to grant citizenship to a person if he is satisfied that granting citizenship to the person would be in the Australian public interest because of the exceptional circumstances of the case, as long as the applicant was not present in Australia as an unlawful citizen at any time during the period of two years immediately before the day the applicant made the application and successfully completed a citizenship test.

There is evidence that the shadow minister does not understand the government’s amendments or how the act works. The government amendments in the Senate did not represent a free pass to citizenship but rather a special residency requirement for a small group of people who do not have a pathway to citizenship. It keeps all the eligibility criteria in place. They have not changed. They are the same. The government amendments will still require applicants to meet all of the eligibility requirements in section 21 of the act, such as: having a permanent visa, being of good character and having an ongoing commitment to this country. The opposition’s proposed amendments, on the other hand, would introduce such a broad discretion that it would have contained no permanent resident requirement, no time to be spent in Australia, no character requirements and no requirement to reside or maintain a close contact with this country.

These are all standard requirements for the conferral of citizenship, which the opposition would have thrown out the window. The opposition has, in fact, created a new eligibility criterion for citizenship which does not have any barriers on a person making an application. The department would have to take an application and prepare a submission to the minister from someone overseas who may never have visited Australia.

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