Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to welcome the Abbott government's measures that will update the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to ensure that dual nationals who engage in terrorism can be stripped of their citizenship. The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection will be able to exercise these powers in the national interest where a dual citizen betrays his or her allegiance to Australia by participating in serious terrorism related activities. This is a modernisation of an existing power that has been in place for many years to deal with people who join a foreign force fighting against Australia. This is to update that to deal with the modern world of terrorism.

These new powers are absolutely necessary and an appropriate response to the rising terrorist threat which will bring our laws closer to and in line with those of the UK and our other 'five eyes' partners. When you look at the different jurisdictions and what is in place in the United Kingdom and in Canada, which is just about to take the assent of royal law, and in New Zealand, which has the capacity to strip citizenship, and of course the United States, which has a system for dealing with people who fight with foreign armies, revoking citizenship under certain circumstances, it is absolutely the case that we should regard citizenship in Australia, in the words of Theresa May, the Home Secretary in the United Kingdom, as a privilege and not a right. Regardless of how we gain our citizenship, it is an extraordinary privilege with rights and responsibilities for all of us.

All Australians will have been concerned and disappointed to see hundreds of Australian citizens travelling to the Middle East to fight with terrorist organisations. The hideous crimes they are committing, the inhumanity, barbarism and very serious nature of what they are engaged in in setting up a quasi-state with the sole purpose of destroying other countries and other states mean we need new approaches to tackle new threats and, of course, we need to modernise our laws. The government is simply modernising our laws to ensure that those people engaged in this absolutely abhorrent activity are kept overseas and not returned to Australia when we have no capacity to deal with their radicalisation and their absolute crimes against all of humanity. The Prime Minister has also announced that the government will launch a national consultation regarding the privileges and responsibilities of Australian citizenship.

Since 1949, we have understood that Australians with dual citizenship who fight for a country at war with Australia forfeit their citizenship. So I would simply say to those people who are constantly asking, 'What about this legal argument, or what about the legal argument?' that, in the current age, there should be no difference in how we deal with this issue to how we deal with people who formally sign up to fight against us with foreign countries. Just because it is a terrorist organisation, we should not think that it is any better than signing up for a country at war with Australia. In fact, there are many arguments to say that it is much worse because they are not governed by international conventions and they are not signatories to any form of human restriction or decency. Indeed, it is much worse and it requires a much better solution to deal with it.

The consultation that the government has announced is welcome. The Prime Minister has announced there will be special envoys travelling the nation to ensure that we have social cohesion and that everybody has an input into new laws and on the best approach to take to ensure that people are not returned to Australia. I have consulted broadly with my community and I have certainly spoken with many people around the country. It is absolutely overwhelming from the community that they do not want to see Australian citizens who are fighting with ISIL or Daesh or involved with terrorism in the Middle East to be returned to Australia under any circumstances. It is completely and utterly unanimous in our community. It is one of those rare issues which unites almost every single person.

Something I would also call upon the government to think about taking further, perhaps raising it at the United Nations, is the concept of introducing statelessness. I would be happy to strip people who have engaged in terrorism in fighting with organisations such as ISIL and Daesh of their citizenship. I have said this loudly and publicly because I believe international conventions also need to modernise themselves to deal with the reality of what is happening in the Middle East. We have a new threat unlike anything we have faced before. It is an existential threat to our civilisation. It is a direct assault on our values. It is very clever and modern, and it needs to be addressed in a clever and modern way. It is something that the government and future governments can take up with the United Nations—all civilised countries working together to ensure the problem of extreme radicalised terrorists who are doing nothing but seeking to kill other human beings and destroy our civilisations are dealt with adequately.

That is why I believe this measure that the government is introducing that will update the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 to deal with dual nationals who engage in terrorism and strip them of their citizenship is absolutely the right measure for the times. It is something that we in this place should all be able to support. I thoroughly endorse it to the House.