Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

One of the unexpectedly best bits about getting elected to parliament is going to citizenship ceremonies. I didn't expect that this would be such a highlight of my job, but going to citizenship ceremonies at Richmond Town Hall and Collingwood Town Hall in Melbourne and up at the Moonee Valley Council is one of the best things that I get to do. For the people who front up, it is something that will happen once in their life. They're there with their family and their friends. Some of them have waited just a few years after coming to Australia—perhaps because of a loved one—and others have been after this for a big part of their life. But, for every one of them, as they take that oath of citizenship and become Australian citizens, you can tell that this is one of the most significant decisions in their lives. Maybe it's love that's got them there. Maybe it's work that's got them there. For many people in Melbourne it's the fact that they're now living in a peaceful society where they're not under threat of war, persecution or famine and they no longer have to wait for several years in a refugee camp in Kenya or in Sudan. They know that they are now able to live a life of peace and freedom.

For many of these people it is a turning point in their lives. I walk around the public housing estates in Melbourne—and we've got more public housing dwellings than any other electorate in the country. Many of the people there weren't citizens when they arrived here and probably did not speak or write very good English when they arrived here. But the ones who've gone on to become Australian citizens are some of the people that express the greatest pride and happiness in having been able to do so.

And then, of course, there are the people in Melbourne who came here after the Second World War. They got off boats from Greece or Italy and they probably didn't speak, write or read very good English at the time they got here. But they are some of the people that help make Melbourne great and they are part of the reason people come from all over Australia, and, indeed, all over the world, to visit Melbourne. When you talk to these people who have taken the journey to become Australian citizens, almost to a person they are so thankful for the opportunity that has been granted to them and they are just itching to say, 'What can I do and what can I give back?'

Pretty much every one of those whom I have met and spoken to at these citizenship ceremonies—and some of the people I have met have had to risk their lives to escape war or persecution, or had a family member who might be under threat of being shot, and some of them have left people behind in their home countries whose lives are under threat because they do not enjoy the kinds of freedoms that we do—has said that they are immensely grateful and asked, 'What can I do next to help work with everyone else to make Australia a better place?' When those people are prepared to risk their lives or sometimes put themselves or their families in danger, the question is: are they the kinds of people we want in this country? You bet! Someone who says: 'Australia is such a good place that I'm prepared to risk my safety or my life to get there, because it's better than the place that I'm coming from, and, when I get there, I want to do everything I can to help make Australia a better place,' is exactly the kind of person we want here.

The government could have turned around and said, 'We're going to use our position as the government, with the biggest megaphone in Australia, to say that people who've made the journey to become Australian citizens are, almost to a person—almost—exactly the kind of people that we want here,' and, 'We're going to acknowledge you and applaud you and celebrate you and do everything we can to make it easier for you to become part of Australian society, because we recognise that part of the reason that you've chosen to come here is exactly because we are a democratic, peaceful society that has the rule of law and that enjoys certain liberties. It is the fact that we're like that that has brought you here in the first place.'

Instead, what does this government do? Well, they're trailing in the polls, so along comes Minister Peter Dutton, the minister for immigration, thinking: 'We're not doing very well in the polls. What are we going to do? We'd better beat up on migrants. We'd better find a new way of beating up on refugees. We'd better find another way of drawing a line through Australian society and putting us on one side and them on the other, because we need something to fill a headline for yet another day.' And so comes this bill to parliament. Instead of working from the presumption that people who want to come here are coming here precisely because they respect Australia's laws and freedoms, they're saying the opposite: 'We're going to make everyone who is in Australia already think that anyone else who wants to come here wants to do us harm.' There is not only no evidence for that—because the overwhelming majority of people who come here are coming here because they want to enjoy Australia's peaceful society—but this bill itself actually does harm. This bill is designed to send a message to the people who are here that we should fear those who are coming, and that we should work from the presumption that someone who sticks their hand up to become a citizen does not actually really want to respect Australia's laws and that somehow this government is going to do something that's going to stop it.

Do you really think that, if someone is intending to come to Australia to do us harm, putting a few new questions on a test is going to make a difference? Of course not. What the government ignores, as they talk up the threat of terrorism in the context of this citizenship bill, is that, in many instances, as we're seeing around the world, the attacks are coming from people who might even have been citizens or born in the country in the first place. To suggest that somehow there is a higher preponderance of threat from a group of people who are coming here who want to be citizens is not only not borne out by the evidence but is just straight out and out dog-whistling.

Dangerously—for anyone who has followed the record of Minister Dutton—this bill gives the minister sweeping new powers. This bill says that the minister can set aside decisions of the quasi-judicial body, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal. In another context, they come in here and say, 'We couldn't possibly overturn the penalty rates decision of the Fair Work Commission'—another quasi-judicial body—'because that would be interfering with the independent umpire, but we're very, very happy, if we think it can boost our numbers in the polls, to give Minister Peter Dutton some more powers to overturn whatever the AAT decides.' It also gives him sweeping new powers to deny a person eligibility to sit the citizenship test in the first place. As Liberty Victoria said in their recent report, it is playing god. It is putting the minister in the position of playing god. He will possess, if this bill goes through, at least 20 individual non-delegable, non-reviewable and non-compellable discretionary powers. Under the guise of saying it is protecting the rule of law, this government is actually diminishing it. This government is saying, 'Let's give Minister Dutton, who most people in this country wouldn't trust with their lunch money, sweeping new powers that can't even be reviewed by a court.' It feigns to call it democracy.

Then the government comes along and says, 'In case we are not being racist enough, let's add in some new requirements for the English language test.' As we have heard from so many people around this country, if this test was in they would not have been here in the first place. It is not because people who came from Greece or Italy had done any harm to this country and not because the people who came from Vietnam on boats, fleeing persecution, had done any harm to this country. Under these new proposals, they might not be let in in the first place because of this English language test. It is why the Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils of Australia makes the important point this is discriminatory and exclusionary.

If the government was actually concerned about people improving their English language skills, I could take them to a number of the neighbourhood houses or learning centres in my electorate where there are people queuing up to do their English language classes. When they reach the end of their allotted hours, they're told: 'That's it. There's no more government support for you. Now you're on your own.' So a lot of them are going out and voluntarily engaging in classes to improve their English. If the government is really that concerned about improving English language, it should provide and expand the support it gives to agencies who are helping people who are here to learn better English. Again, my electorate has one of the largest proportions of people who were born overseas or who have recently arrived in Australia. When I talk to people in my electorate, they say, 'Where can I sign up to improve my English to understand and improve my skills more?' If the government was serious about that or if, somehow, there is a massive crisis in Australia at the moment that there are not enough people who have great English language skills—I do not accept for a moment that that is a problem—then that is what it would do.

I look at my friends whose parents came from Greece or Italy and are now living in Richmond or in Ascot Vale, and I think, 'If this Liberal government had its way, you would not be here in the country with me because your parents or your grandparents would never have got in in the first place.' I would urge everyone in this country, including in this parliament, to have a think about who is in their workplace, who their next-door neighbours are and who has married into their family and just go back a generation or two and ask yourself: would that person, when they got off the boat or off the plane, have been able to pass the high-level English language test this government wants to impose on them? If the answer is no, then your spouse, your family member, your workmate or your neighbour would not be here. That is effectively what this government is aiming to do. It is aiming to say to people, 'You don't belong in this country; we'll send you back,' even though they are people I would call friends and fellow citizens.

One of the other issues that has caused a great amount of angst to people in Melbourne is the retrospective nature of this legislation and the fact there are so many people who have been working towards citizenship for such a long time. They have been making their plans about whether to rent or buy a home, about their jobs or whether to take up jobs and, in other cases, about whether to get married and start a family here. They have been making their decisions and their plans in their life based on the law as it was at the time. Then in comes this government and it says, 'You now need to wait an additional four years before you can apply for citizenship.' This applies now across the board, and it has thrown people's lives into chaos. The stories are hard. There are heartbreaking stories of relationships that now have to potentially uproot or that may not continue to exist. There are employers in my electorate of Melbourne who thought they might have some people signing up to continue working in world-leading medical and health research, but who now find those employees might not be able to be citizens after all. There are brains we are going to lose and there are hearts we are going to lose. Of course, the government doesn't care about any of that, because at the end of the day all of this is just simply some dog whistling.

If there is one silver lining—I don't think there is one, but if there is—to this legislation, it's that it is a sign of this government's increasing desperation. Do you want to know why, Liberals and Nationals, you are on the nose in pretty much every poll? It's because people have had enough of this rubbish. People have had enough of Malcolm Turnbull and his government trying to make people feel scared, when actually people are trying to come together. There is a lot going on in the world that is making people feel uncertain and insecure, and governments can either pander to that, as this one is doing, or they can bring people together. That is what a real and a decent government would do, and that's why this bill must be opposed. We should use this place to unite people, not divide them.

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