David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Repudiation) Bill 2023 entrenches two classes of citizens in Australia. It's remarkable seeing Labor so comfortable with that. Labor, which traditionally has celebrated being the party of multicultural Australia, is saying to the great bulk of multicultural Australia that their Australian citizenship is worth less than that of many others in this country. The Greens don't believe in two classes of citizen—a class of citizen that the government can move the courts to strip the citizenship of, simply because they have a citizenship of another country, and the rest of Australia. It's offensive to the concept of us all being equal. It's offensive to the concept of a vibrant, dynamic and equal multicultural Australia. To see the Labor Party pushing through this bill with a bunch of opposition amendments that make it even easier to strip people's citizenship off them is a pretty depressing spectacle. In fact, there has been a list of depressing spectacles from Labor in the last two weeks, and this just joins the list of political surrenders from Labor.

I just want to be absolutely clear: the Greens don't support two classes of Australian citizen—a class that can be marginalised, discriminated against and have their citizenship stripped off them by an angry government, which might be responding to a shock jock campaign, and the rest of Australia. In the Greens' view of this country, all citizens are equal and all citizens should have that fundamental right of citizenship. It should not be able to be stripped off them by a vindictive minister who brings an application in a court to strip that citizenship off them.

Labor's defence of this bill is: it's better having a minister bring an application and then a court adjudicating than just having the minister do it all. Well, what about we take a more principled approach, and we just say that Australian citizenship is not there to be stripped, and, if an Australian citizen commits a wrong, then we'll deal with them as an Australian citizen and we won't pretend to deal with people equally while holding the threat of stripping the citizenship off, potentially, millions of Australian citizens who fit into a class of citizen that the coalition thinks is lesser? We just fundamentally reject that, and that's why we reject this bill.