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

I will not delay the Senate unduly, but it is not every day that the parliament passes a brand-new citizenship act, and I think it is worthy of specific note. I urge the community at large as well as all of us here in the parliament to continue to promote debate about the nature of citizenship. It is a continually evolving concept. I do not think it helps terribly much to have debate about the nature of citizenship reduced to facile discussions about whether or not people know when Melbourne Cup day is and those sorts of things. There is still continuing evolution in the nature of the law surrounding citizenship, which this act demonstrates. We have a burgeoning number of people who are dual citizens or more. We still have, as was covered during the debate in this committee stage, quite different pathways for people to become citizens. That is completely understandable and natural. You will have different pathways that people’s lives lead them along to get to a point where they can become a citizen. But we need to make sure that there are not incongruities between those pathways. One of the concerns I have with the government’s proposed citizenship test is not so much that there is a test but that we may have different classes of citizens—those who are required to pass a test and those who not only are not required to but may well not even be able to pass those tests in many cases. We need to make sure that the different ways people become Australian citizens do not lead to different rights, different obligations or different impressions and understandings in the Australian community about whether or not some people are more Australian than others.

We also need to make sure that we do not have an excessively jingoistic approach to citizenship such that anyone who is not a citizen but who may have been a resident of Australia for decades is seen as somehow not a real member of the Australian community. There are many different ways people make up and contribute to the fabric of the Australian community and we need to make sure, in debating and refining our concept of citizenship, that they do not, even inadvertently, end up being used as ways to develop prejudice or to discriminate against or push people down into being marginalised members of our society. The nature of migration is changing enormously. The nature of the nation state is continuing to change enormously and we must try to ensure that our public debates, and particularly statements made by leaders in the community, both political and otherwise, reflect that rather than exploit the potential for division.

I would use just one other example to demonstrate this, because I was contacted and had this raised with me by people in the veteran community. I am sure some senators would be aware of examples of dissatisfaction amongst some of the veteran community about people who have served in the armed forces for Australia. I use the example of Mr James Riddle, who I think got some coverage about his circumstance. He was recruited in the UK to serve for the Australian armed forces in Vietnam. He did three tours of duty in Vietnam but did not take out citizenship for various reasons, has not lived in the country for a while and is now not able to regain residence, let alone citizenship. Most people would think that if you had done three tours of duty serving in the Australian armed forces in Vietnam you would probably have a pretty good right to call yourself Australian.

That is just one example, and always there are going to be anomalies in any law. I am not suggesting that we can come up with the perfect act but, when we have these debates about what it means to be Australian, when we are looking at different ways to define that, it is very easy, if you get too jingoistic about it, to end up demonstrating yourself to be a bit of a hypocrite. And, whilst we all wonder about what are and are not Australian values, I would like to think that avoiding hypocrisy is one Australian value that we try to aspire to.

It is those sorts of issues and circumstances we need to debate. We have a variance in the pathways to citizenship, and now there is a larger gap between the people coming in through the defence services and the people coming through in general residency. We have people who have done significant amounts of defence service in active combat who end up being denied. As I said, I am not suggesting that we can always fix every single case, but we always need to be cognisant of the perceptions of who is and is not Australian and how those perceptions are used in political and public debate and with regard to who does and does not have certain entitlements. The more we can alleviate inconsistency in that area, the more the concept of citizenship will evolve in a constructive way. I think it is about making Australia reach its full potential, and the more we can enmesh the concept of citizenship looking to Australia’s future, seeing ourselves move forward as a nation, the more we can fulfil that potential.

That is what a new citizenship act is about, and I hope that is where the debate leads. In conclusion, I hope that in passing this new act the government fully explains and promotes our new act not just with a nice, jingoistic flag-waving pre-election advertising jingle—I am sure there are plenty of thoughts about that—but more by letting people know about the changes and the opportunities now presented to people who might otherwise have been barred from becoming a citizen. I think that is also an important part of making this new act as effective as possible.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a third time.