Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I do appreciate your counsel and advice, Mr President. I would like to make it very clear to the Senate that, from go to whoa, this bill has been an absolute bloody shambles. It started because it was floated by extreme right-wingers in the Abbott government. It was floated by extreme right-wingers, like the member for Bass, Mr Nikolic. It was taken to Cabinet and then unceremoniously leaked from Cabinet as soon as it got there by a cohort of people who did not like the approach that was taken by the former Prime Minister on the advice of Mr Nikolic and his colleagues. And, of course, that advice was to not only allow for the stripping of citizenship from dual nationals in this country but to allow for the stripping of citizenship from sole Australian citizens, who might have had an opportunity to apply for citizenship in another jurisdiction in the world. That of course would have rendered those people, at least temporarily and possibly permanently, as stateless people and would have contravened any number of international human rights treaties and protocols.

Then it was introduced in the House of Representatives in such a shabby way that there were actually typographical errors in the legislation. It was basically unreadable when it was tabled in the House of Representatives. Then it went into the closed-shop Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, the bipartisan secret committee which has Labor and Liberal members in it. It was found by that committee to be manifestly inadequate, and it recommended a number of changes—27 in total. Then Labor fell in a screaming heap, as they so often do on national security measures, and fell into zombie lock-step behind the coalition government. Eyes glazed over, arms outstretched, Labor just joined in the zombie shuffle here.

Then, to make matters worse, today in the House of Representatives, bang, down comes another series of amendments, purportedly on the advice of the Solicitor-General, who has presumably awoken from a slumber and decided that there were constitutional issues with this legislation, notwithstanding the fact that Professor George Williams has pointed out on many, many occasions that there are significant constitutional implications with this legislation and that it is quite possibly unconstitutional and it quite possibly may be found to be unconstitutional by the High Court.

The first that we heard of these amendments was in the House of Representatives when the minister was on his feet debating this very bill this afternoon. But, interestingly, as our colleague in the House of Reps, Adam Bandt, was saying, in the revised legislation that contains the amendments, the revised schedule 1, headed 'Revised EH190', it makes it clear that they were actually completed and printed out on Friday last week. So these amendments have been kept secret by the Labor Party and the coalition parties in this Senate since Friday last week, and now the government has got the gall to come into this place and seek leave and move to have this legislation debated forthwith, when it only arrived in the Senate 10 short minutes ago.

This is a disgraceful abuse of parliamentary process, an outrageous collusion between the government and their mates on national security in the Labor Party. They are treating this parliament with utter contempt, and I say to the crossbenchers and I say to good longstanding senators in this place: you should stand up for the Senate here. You should vote against the motion that is currently before the Senate and give us all a chance to actually get our heads around the amendments that have been put through the House of Representatives and that appeared in the Senate only moments ago this evening.

This legislation covers an extraordinarily serious issue. We are talking about, by administrative action, taking Australian citizenship away from people. It ought not be a gift that a government or a minister can give and take, but that is what this legislation proposes to do. Interestingly and outrageously, not only are the government, with the cooperation of the Labor Party, proposing that; they are proposing to try and sneak it through in the dead of night this evening, with legislation heavily amended in the Reps that arrived in the Senate only moments ago, with amendments that nobody in the country, outside the closed shop of Labor and Liberal, had seen until this afternoon when they were tabled in the House of Representatives.

We want the opportunity to consult these amendments out. We want the opportunity to talk to people who are expert in this field and to understand their views. We want the opportunity to properly consider whether or not this legislation is likely to be struck down by the High Court, because I strongly believe that it is going to end up in the High Court. We want the opportunity to understand whether or not the High Court would be likely to strike this legislation down. The amendments that were moved in the House today, according to the government, were specifically concerned with trying to make sure this legislation could survive a challenge in the High Court. They were specifically concerned with that, and yet the Senate is proposing to roll over here this evening, like a dog that wants its tummy tickled, Senator Heffernan—and you are going to be part of it, someone who has been in here long enough to know better. You are going to be part of this collusion tonight. That is what is going to happen here tonight. The Senate deserves to be treated better than Labor and Liberal are proposing to treat the Senate this evening.

I remind members again: the first that anyone outside the closed Labor-coalition shop knew of the amendments that were tabled in the House was when they were tabled this afternoon, but we know, from the date on the footer of 'Revised EH90' of the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 schedule 1 main amendments, that these were completed at the latest at 5.12 pm on 27 November, which was last Friday. So where have these legislative amendments been for the last 72 hours? Where have they been? They have been kept secret from the Senate. They have been kept secret from the Australian people. That is what we are debating here—whether we should allow the government to get away with secrecy in the Australian parliament, with this utter lack of transparency in the Australian parliament. That is what we are being asked to vote on here.

It ought not occur like this. There is no need for this legislation to be brought on this evening—no need whatsoever. There is ample government time this week in the Senate to have this legislation debated. So you have got to ask: what is so urgent about bringing this legislation on tonight? I have a theory about that, and that is, Labor want this passed in the dead of night because they are ashamed of the position that they have taken on this. They are ashamed that you have got a Prime Minister in Canada in Justin Trudeau who is going to repeal legislation similar to this legislation which we are now being asked to pass. I think Labor are ashamed that a Liberal politician in Canada—a Prime Minister, I might add, who puts our Prime Minister in the absolute shade in the way he has embraced the responsibilities of his role—intends to repeal very similar legislation. I think Labor are embarrassed by what they are proposing to do here, which is to fall into lockstep with the government, as they always do on issues that are within the national security ambit.

What we are seeing in Canada is a very welcome return to sanity in that country, a very welcome acknowledgement from the Prime Minister, Mr Trudeau, that in fact citizenship ought not be the gift of a minister or a government to give or take. It ought not be able to be removed by the signature of a minister.

Senator Heffernan interjecting—

I will take the interjection because what Senator Heffernan is arguing for us to do is to export people who are labelled as terrorists into a global marketplace of violent, disenfranchised, radicalised people. In the view of the Greens, the best place for somebody who is a violent extremist, having been charged and convicted, is locked up in Australian prisons where they can do no further harm. But what do the government want to do and what are Labor going to support them doing? Buying them a plane ticket back to where they can pick up guns, pick up bombs and potentially harm or kill Australians. That is exactly what we will be debating when this legislation comes on today. That is going to be the question before the chamber either tonight or tomorrow when this legislation passes.

I am yet to hear a single argument as to how this legislation makes Australia or Australians safer; I am yet to hear it. This legislation owes far more to the government wanting to be seen to be doing something than it does to a coherent response to violent extremism. This government has no coherency when it comes to its response to violent extremism. We saw a tragic shooting in Parramatta only a number of weeks ago and within days the government was in here talking about reducing the age to which people can have control orders applied to them down to the age of 14. That was a completely political, knee-jerk response to that tragedy in Parramatta when, to the best of anyone's knowledge, the child accused of perpetrating that act was not on the police's radar or on the radar of the intelligence services anyway. But, still, in it comes because it wants to be seen to be doing something. As usual, Labor does not want to fight it on national security so it abandons principles like natural justice and the rule of law. It abandons coherence in its policy making and falls into a zombie shuffle behind the government.

The Greens will not be falling into a zombie shuffle behind the government. We will be standing up for the rule of law and we will be standing up for natural justice. We will be standing up in order to make Australians as safe as we can make them. One thing we do agree on is that one of the primary roles of government is to make Australia and Australians as safe as we can possibly make them. We absolutely agree with that. But where the government's logic and Labor's logic, by extension, is falling down is that they have made no argument as to how exporting violent extremists back into the global melting pots of violence, radicalisation and extremism makes us safer. We are basically saying to them: 'Go back over there and continue your radicalisation.' Should we not be locking them up in Australian prisons is the question I ask.