George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Senator McKim, because we have chosen the self-executing model, and we have done that, Senator, because the self-executing model was already part of our law. As I said in summing up the second reading debate yesterday, that model has been part of Australian law since the Nationality and Citizen Citizenship Act of 1948 was passed in that year, and section 19 of that act introduced the concept of renunciation by conduct. That provision was continued in the law, in slightly reworded form but in all legal respects essentially in the same terms, by section 35 of the 2007 Citizenship Act. So we have decided to apply a concept that has been a feature of Australian citizenship law for some 67 years.

What we have done, as I said yesterday, Senator McKim, is that we have contemporised it. The original section 19 of the Nationality and Citizenship Act applied to Australian citizens who served in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. It provided that, upon commencing so to serve, they shall cease to be an Australian citizen. The concept of renunciation by conduct by reason of engaging in hostile military activity against Australia has been a part of our law since 1948. What we have done is taken the view—which I am sure you would agree with, Senator McKim, because I dare say you are a close student of international politics—that, in this day and age, threats by terrorist organisations and groups and irregular nonstate actors can be just as lethally threatening as conventional warfare.

Think of it this way, Senator McKim: what we have done is taken the original 1948 provision, which applied to service in the armed forces of an enemy state, and applied it as well to engagement in terrorist activity by or on behalf of terrorist organisations or in the name of terrorist causes being prosecuted by nonstate actors. That is, in the government's view, and the opposition's view evidently, a sensible contemporisation of a reality of international politics.