Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against this terrible bill that seeks to divide people in Australia from one another and to deny immigrants the most powerful symbol of belonging in this country that is available to them: citizenship. There are no constructive proposals in this bill. It is in fact a destructive bill. It tries to link citizenship to national security when there is in fact nothing at all to link the two. It tries to pretend that somehow citizenship should be viewed in a negative light rather than a positive light and it tries to pretend that increasing the number of people who can call themselves proud Australians is a bad thing rather than a good one. It is anything but.

Citizenship is about inclusion. It is about giving people a stake in the country they already call home so that they can feel a part of it, so that they can feel that they have rights but also responsibilities. It brings them into the tent. It helps to combat feelings of otherness. It reduces distance and it encourages integration and learning.

I don't know if the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection has been to any citizenship ceremonies lately. In fact, I would be surprised if he had even in his own electorate, because, if he had, he would see that they are joyful affairs. They are all about family, togetherness and unity. People are so proud to become Australian. You can see it in their huge smiles and sometimes in their tears. I've attended three citizenship ceremonies in my electorate in the last few months. I've shaken the hands of parents with young families whose kids are excitedly waving Australian flags, of thirtysomethings and of one British man who'd lived in Australia for more than three decades. It was a privilege to be part of what was such a happy occasion for them. It always is.

When it comes to belonging, symbols matter. That certificate of citizenship means a lot to people. It particularly matters to people who have escaped hardship or persecution overseas and have expended an inordinate amount of effort to come to Australia.

It mattered to my father, who came as an unaccompanied minor escaping from Nazi Germany at the age of 11. He was also stateless. As a Jew, when he left Germany he was stripped of his German citizenship and his passport was stamped with a J. For a short time he belonged nowhere. His English, he says, was poor, but Australia to him and to his parents—my grandparents, who were incredibly lucky to escape Germany themselves and join him later—was a refuge and a safe haven. He became a citizen and has lived his life as a proud Australian. He has contributed immensely to this country. He is a well-known composer of classical music and of scores for film and television and received an Order of Australia in 1992. He is also, I might proudly add, a life member of the Australian Labor Party.

Stories like my dad's are not unique. There are people across Australia who are themselves naturalised Australian citizens, or the children of those people, who understand just how important citizenship is and how much it means to them or their parents. So let's have a look at the different ways that this bill tries to undermine citizenship.

This bill increases the wait time for people to apply for citizenship to a minimum of four years permanent residence. It sets a higher standard for English language tests, meaning applicants will need university-level English to pass. It amends the Australian values statement to include a reference to 'allegiance to Australia' and changes the test for Australian citizenship to include questions about Australian values. It introduces a requirement for applicants to demonstrate their 'integration' into the Australian community. Finally and most relevant to the shadow portfolio I have, it gives the minister power to set aside citizenship-related decisions made by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. I will go through each of these in turn, starting with the extension of the wait time for citizenship.

It makes no sense to me why it might be said to be in the nation's interest to force people who are already permanent residents to wait longer than they already do to become citizens. Permanent residents already have to wait at least four years before they become Australian citizens. That does not include the time before they became permanent residents, which itself can take years. This bill will make all of these people wait even longer. Let us be clear: we already make it pretty hard for people to become permanent residents and then to become citizens. The bureaucratic hoops they must jump through are immense and the fees they have to pay are prohibitive.

The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection says, 'Strengthening the residency requirement is intended to support integration and facilitate a more thorough evaluation of a person's commitment to Australia'. What rubbish! How on earth is alienating a new arrival from the rights of citizenship a way to promote integration? How many more years than four do you need for a person to prove they are worthy of living in Australia? I repeat: this law is going to affect people who are already permanent residents of our country. In truth, these changes will not promote integration at all. They will have the opposite effect. They are designed to make citizenship feel out of reach to a certain class of people and to exclude them. The result will only be more division and fractiousness in our country if new arrivals are made to feel that they do not belong as Australians.

Now to the English language test. The new requirements also raise the bar for citizenship to university-level English. Citizenship applicants will have to pass IELTS level 6 test in listening, speaking, reading and writing. Of course, Labor agrees that understanding and speaking English is an important part of being an Australian. That is beyond question. What we are talking about is the level of proficiency required. This new level is far too high. It is the same level required by some universities to enrol in their courses. Indeed, the University of Melbourne's Language Testing Research Centre says it would be too high for many Australian-born citizens with low literacy levels. We are not talking about some way of facilitating people to become citizens here. We are talking about putting another block in their way.

There are some people who have been living for decades in Australia who have contributed greatly to this country who have limited English or, indeed, have great English now but would not have been able to pass the proposed test when they first applied to become citizens. As I said earlier, my father believes he may not have been able to pass such an English test when he became a citizen, and what a loss that would have been to our country. This is discrimination at a base level. The new English test will hit different people in different ways. Those who are wealthy with access to education and private language tutoring will be fine, but imagine those who have come from war-torn countries on humanitarian visas. Will we deny them citizenship because they have not had the same educational opportunities? Apparently, under this government's proposed regime, we will.

I turn now to the government's proposals to require new citizens to demonstrate their integration into Australian society and for questions about Australian values to be included in the citizenship test. We know nothing about what this so-called integration test may look like because the government has refused to provide any detail. We may not know what it is but, my goodness, I don't think I have heard anything proposed in this chamber that sounds more Orwellian. How will we require new citizens to demonstrate their integration? Make them play a game of cricket? Determine if they can cook a barbecue? Sing Waltzing Matilda? Seriously, it is just ridiculous. I am sure the details of this test, should they ever be made public, will be even more alarming than the examples I have just offered.

To top this off, the government also wants to test new Australians on Australian values. I suppose the government, or even the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, gets to decide what those are. Or will they hold a plebiscite to determine what everyone thinks an Australian value is? I shudder at what the current immigration minister might define as Australian values. This is the same 'Team Australia' rhetoric we heard from the former Prime Minister, the member for Warringah. There is a reason we have moved on. It is divisive rhetoric which sends exactly the wrong message to people. It is exclusionary, not inclusive and designed for cheap political gain.

Finally, and most relevant to my shadow portfolio, I am horrified at the new powers this bill proposes to give to the minister to overrule the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. The minister has demonstrated his contempt for the AAT very clearly in recent months. This government hates independent umpires interfering with its agenda. Just have a look at the narrow escape three Liberal ministers had from charges of contempt for attacking the integrity of the judiciary. That is how bad things have gotten under this government.

This bill provides that the personal decision to the minister regarding citizenship cannot be reviewed on merit by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and gives the minister the power to override AAT citizenship decisions on the basis of character or evidence of identity. This is a truly worrying expansion of the powers of the minister without an avenue for appeal. I find it hard to understand the vendetta this government, and this minister, is presently levying against the AAT, especially considering that over 90 per cent of the current members of the AAT are, by now, people who have been appointed by this coalition government.

Under this new bill, a minister would be able to cancel citizenship approval or revoke citizenship with no right of review. The only condition the minister must satisfy is that this was done on the grounds of some—unnamed—'public interest'. This is acceptable, according to the explanatory memorandum for this bill, because 'the minister represents the Australian community and has a particular insight into Australian community standards and values and what is in Australia's public interest'. This justification is flimsy in the extreme. In fact, I would argue this current minister is hugely out of touch with the values of the Australian community. Do we really want him cancelling someone's citizenship because of some feeling that he has that the person in question does not fit in? Because that is what we are talking about here. Let's be clear as to what a merits review is. It is a review of the facts of the case. It seeks to correct where the minister has got something wrong. How can the minister think himself above such a basic process? It says a lot about the mentality of this minister and his obsession with gathering power, that this provision should even be included in this bill. It is not good governance, and Labor won't support it.

The second part of the AAT-related changes is a new power by the minister simply to overrule any decisions by the tribunal which he does not like. This is on the basis, it would seem, of a few tabloid front pages which the government has refused to provide a factual basis for, decrying so-called 'fake refugees'. This again undermines the role of the AAT as an independent umpire. What is the point of that if the minister can just reverse its decisions? These overruling powers are given to the minister on matters of 'good character', yet the term is not even defined under the act.

The overwhelming impression I get from this bill is that it is driven by a minister obsessed with power, with no obvious rationale beyond dividing this country and seeking to use nasty political tactics. I can barely think of a lower political act than this bill in the time I have spent in this parliament. It is the product of a minister who has lost touch with reality and lost touch with his country. Indeed, he has apparently lost touch with the heritage and history of his own party, given that it was Menzies who relaxed citizenship requirements. That's right. Menzies thought citizenship was a good thing and that it was a good thing for permanent residents to become citizens sooner, not later. There was a succession of changes from the mid 1950s onward by the Menzies government to make it easier for people living in Australia to become citizens; because, by living in Australia as citizens, they were going to feel they belonged to our country, and the sooner that that happened, the better. The Menzies government understood this.

What has happened to this minister's party, the party of Menzies, on Malcolm Turnbull's watch? It is barely recognisable as a party that stood for inclusion, as a party that stood for participation, as a party that wanted as many people as possible to become Australian citizens as soon as possible. I condemn this bill. I condemn the divisive ideas behind it and I condemn this government for bringing it to the parliament.

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