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

[by video link] I want to make a few brief comments on behalf of the Greens now. Some fuller comments will be made by our justice spokesperson, Senator McKim, when the bill reaches the Senate. We're dealing, in the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Cessation) Bill 2019, with one of the most critical decisions that could ever be made about someone, which is to strip them of their citizenship. We're dealing with a situation where someone has Australian citizenship and has citizenship of another country and the government wants to strip that person of their Australian citizenship. Taking someone's citizenship away when they have got it either because they were born here or they've taken the step to get Australian citizenship is one of the most fundamental decisions that a government can make, because you basically lose all your rights with respect to the country that you're a citizen of, including, fundamentally, the right to even live here. So we're dealing with a situation where a government can make a decision—in this instance, under this bill, through the stroke of a pen—that renders someone potentially not stateless, because they have to have citizenship of another country, but unable to be in Australia and enjoy all the rights and privileges of an Australian citizen.

The government's approach, prior to this bill, has been to say that will just be automatic on the occurrence of certain events. You get no quibble from us. I think everyone would agree that many of the events that are covered under this bill are heinous events and attacks on the Australian people. The government's approach, instead of saying, 'If someone has committed a crime, you bring them before a court, you try them and, if they've done something wrong, you lock them up and they pay the penalty'—which is the way the rule of law works—is to say, 'If they've done these things then you just strip them of their citizenship, and it happens automatically.' That's been the government's approach up till now. Not surprisingly, a lot of people have questioned whether that is the right approach from the perspective of combating terrorism and whether it is even constitutional. The normal rule-of-law process is that you get tried in a court: you get brought there, you get convicted if you've done something wrong and you get sentenced. If instead the government is able to simply say, 'You lose your citizenship,' serious questions are raised about what that means for the rule of law, what that means for our fight against terrorism, whether it's even effective, and whether it is even a constitutional approach. In a sense, the shift that has been made in principle to say, 'Let's move away from something being an automatic decision to something that is subject to some form of potentially challengeable decision,' might have something going for it. It makes a bad situation slightly better. Indeed, it's something the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor has called for. It has said there are real problems with this approach of simply saying we are going to junk the rule of law and instead have legislation that automatically strips someone of their citizenship.

The problem is that this bill doesn't just simply move away from that automatic approach, if you want to call it that, to one where the minister has to make the decision; it does other things as well that aren't picking up the independent recommendations made by the national security monitor, and that is cause for great concern. It gives the minister enormous discretionary power and essentially lowers the bar of the test that the minister has to apply. But then, when the minister makes the decisions, there are restrictions on the procedural safeguards that you might expect to be there—for example, judicial review is diminished and merits review is removed. Those procedural safeguards that you might want when a minister is making such a significant decision are not there in the way that they should be and are not there in the way that has been recommended. You also end up, therefore, in a situation where decisions could be made by a minister who has enormous power that are not only not challengeable but, contrary to one of the problems the bill was designed to address, could potentially render someone stateless. What happens if the other country to which the person has a dual nationality also says that they are not interested in having them back? You could potentially end up in a situation where, instead of having someone who has done something wrong in prison, where we know who and where they are, they could say Australia's shutting the door to them and other countries are shutting the doors to them, and they could potentially become rogue agents on the world stage.

Fundamentally, giving this minister—the minister we have at the moment—significant power is also of grave concern. In order to diminish the risk of terrorist attacks against Australia by Australian citizens and to minimise the risk that people who are Australian citizens might want to start doing things that cause harm against the Australian people, one of the best things that we can do is make sure that Australia is a place where everyone feels that they have a place. In other words, address risks of social exclusion from the beginning. A lot of people will say that one of the steps—of course, it's a multifaceted problem; there's no silver bullet here—to address the risk of radicalisation is to address issues of inclusion from the beginning and inclusion in all its forms.

Let us not forget, though, that the very same minister who is going to get enormous powers under this legislation—including, namely, the power to determine whether someone is a citizen—is the same minister who is quite happy to whip up hatred against individual groups of people based on their ethnicity in order to try to win votes. I remember Minister Dutton saying very, very clearly, that apparently people in Melbourne, where I am from, were afraid to go out to dinner because we were worried about African gangs, in his words. What rubbish! That was simply not true. What I can say is the case is that when Minister Dutton goes and says things like that, when we hear these terrible statements that are made using race to try to win votes—the minister is worried about losing votes to One Nation, so he tries to use race and racism in order to win votes—that increases the risk of social exclusion. That does not make everyone in Australia feel that Australia is a place where they have got a place. So, rather than get up with chest-thumping rhetoric about how we need to give the minister more power to strip people of their citizenship, the minister should first have a look at his own words and what he might be doing to increase dislocation and social exclusion in Australia, to foment discord just in order to win a few votes and to use race to try and win votes.

If the government had taken a more consistent approach to making Australia a more inclusive place and had been prepared to stand up to the racism that we see peddled across society, then the government might be able to come to this chamber with a bit more seriousness and with cleaner hands and say, 'We need to take steps to deal with people who commit heinous acts against this country.' But the government do not come to this debate with clean hands; the government come to this debate with a history of using race to try and win votes. So the government come to this debate, on the one hand, saying that they are very concerned about Australia's safety and, on the other hand, doing things that they should not be doing that increase the risk that people will feel Australia is a place to attack rather than a place to call home. The government needs to go back to square one in thinking about its approach to ensuring social cohesion in this country, and the government needs to ditch the vile racism of trying to drive wedges in the Australian population.

On the bill itself, as I mentioned, further comments will be made when this bill reaches the Senate. It is very, very disappointing that the bill looks likely to pass despite the fact that the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor's recommendations are not going to be picked up. As I've said before, we may end up in a situation where the provisions on the automatic cessation of citizenship—which is an important issue with respect to the rule of law—are removed from the act but where a minister who does not have a good record for standing up for values of equality in this country will now have a significant amount of power, without the capacity to be held accountable. Those are recommendations that were made, and those are recommendations that should be implemented if we are going to give this minister such significant powers.

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