Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I will not speak on the opposition’s behalf. Rather than call a quorum, I will recap on a couple of matters whilst we are waiting for the opposition shadow minister to come into the chamber. This debate has again come on rather more quickly than people might have anticipated. I will take the opportunity to indicate that the Democrats will support opposition amendment (3) when it is moved.

The important issue with regard to this legislation that is worth re-emphasising is that we are putting in place an entire new piece of law. We are not just amending the existing Citizenship Act; we are putting in place a brand-new one. It is worth reminding senators that until, I think, 1948 there was actually no such thing as a formal Australian citizen in law. In my speech in the second reading debate, I recalled going through some papers of my father’s not too long ago and discovering a resume he had written in the late 1940s detailing some of his experiences and qualifications to date. He was born in Sydney, his parents were both born in Sydney and yet on that resume he had put his nationality as British. It came as a bit of a shock to me to discover that my father was theoretically British.

It shows how much the notion of what Australian citizenship has evolved and continues to evolve. It is worth noting that the very notion of being a British subject and what is and is not an alien under the Constitution is something that is still being resolved at law. We have had two different High Court cases just in the last few years which have come down on different sides of the fence. They were four-three decisions in both cases but took different positions with respect to the status of people who are not Australian citizens but may have been very long-term residents in this country—whether they are or are not an alien and whether they are a noncitizen non-alien and all sorts of things like that.

That can sound like lots of arcane legal argument—and to some extent it is, except for the people who are directly affected by the case at hand—but it is a reminder of how the notion of citizenship is still evolving. It is also a reminder that there is still no precise head of power under the Constitution regarding citizenship. There is a head of power regarding the treatment of aliens, but that is not necessarily the same thing.

I also wanted to draw attention to the fact—and many of these amendments, including the one that is about to be moved, go to some of these issues—that there are people whose parents may have had citizenship but it lapsed for various reasons, particularly people who had no say in the changing status of their citizenship when they were children. These may be people who, as we know, have lived here for decades and often assumed they were Australian citizens and did not realise until it was drawn to their attention—often in less than pleasant circumstances—that they were not citizens. Many of them had been registered on the electoral roll and all sorts of things because they assumed that that they were Australian citizens. The notion that people who are citizens, who have this bit of paper, are somehow full-blown, 100 per cent Aussies and all the rest are somehow not true Australians is a pretty misleading concept.

I also want to emphasise again the expansion of the ability of people to be Australian citizens whilst also being citizens of another country, that is, being a dual citizen. I had this in a second reading amendment and was disappointed that it was not supported by the government. This is what we have seen both in many of the changes that are contained in this legislation and the whole new act that is about to be adopted and indeed in major amendments that were made a few years ago. Indeed, in some cases, we have people who are citizens of more than two countries—of three countries. Some years back it was actually not legal: if you became an Australian citizen, you automatically forfeited your citizenship of another country. That approach has changed and I think it is a very significant approach. It is an important part of expanding the strength of multiculturalism and expanding the benefits that we as Australians can get from the diverse range of backgrounds we have of people who are part of our community and our country.

It is worth remembering that Australia has one of the highest proportions of overseas born people. I think it is almost one-quarter of all Australians are overseas born. When you add on top of that people who have at least one parent who is overseas born, you are getting an extremely significant proportion of the Australian community. Very large numbers of those people will be dual citizens. Previous attempts I have made to ascertain exactly how many Australians are also citizens of another country have come up against a bit of a blank. Nobody actually knows. But, if we have nearly one-quarter of our community overseas born and a significant number on top of that whose parents are overseas born, there is a fair chance that the number of dual citizens we have is actually greater than the 20 per cent that is often used as an estimate. The more we go down this path—and it is a path that I support us going down—the more we are coming up against a major impediment in our Constitution, which is that anybody who is a dual citizen is precluded from running for the federal parliament. That is something that all parties have said they would support amending. Unfortunately we have not seen it progressed to the stage where they would take action to make it happen.