Tim Ayres (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Minister for Trade) Share this | Hansard source

Senator McKim, if you're interested in our broad migration program and our humanitarian program, your approach is very unhelpful indeed.

What did the last government leave us with? It left us with unconstitutional legislation and a migration program that is broken. The position of many temporary visa workers has left them exposed, which has created problems in our labour market. It did not address the skills and productivity issues in the Australian economy in any serious way. The reason that we are here dealing with these issues is that the then minister for these questions, the now Leader of the Opposition, completely abrogated his responsibility. With the benefit of all of the advice and all of the machinery of government and all of the huffing and puffing that went on in that period, he completely left Australia and Australians exposed.

There was a victory of form over substance on national security, migration and citizenship questions, and that will always be the case with this crowd. They will posture for their friends in One Nation. They will make noise in the daily newspapers and on the radio. They will try to create an illusion that sound and fury and waving your arms around somehow assists in national security terms when what is actually required is a sober approach. It is making careful judgements in the national interest. It is dealing with issues on the basis of facts and on the evidence. It is making cold, clinical judgements that balance the national security questions and the legal and constitutional questions and make sure that we've got a migration and citizenship regime that Australians can be proud of as well as have confidence in, one that deals with the great human rights questions that are engaged here.

Citizenship, in global terms and in the terms in which we deal with citizenship questions, is not a straightforward, immutable concept.

In different jurisdictions, different meanings are attached to it. It is a legal construct and an administrative construct, but it is also absolutely vital in national identity terms, in cultural terms, in traditional terms, in historical terms and in community terms. It is, indeed, what binds Australians together, and it has to be a big enough idea in conceptual terms, as well as in legal and administrative terms, that it binds together First Nations Australians, rural and regional Australians, people in our cities, our multicultural communities from wherever they come, new citizens and people who were born here.

What is required here is to make sure that we provide a definition of citizenship and a clarity around these ideas that means, in a national sense, that citizenship is a construct that brings Australians together and improves social cohesion, and this measure is pretty fundamental to that idea, because if you are a dual citizen and you commit a series of offences that break your citizenship tie then citizenship must mean something. But there is a gravity around these questions that ought to be treated seriously and ought not to be the focus of the sort of puerile politics that we've seen on display this week. That does mean getting these measures right.

The legislation that's in front of the Senate today achieves that balance, I think, in a way that Australians can have confidence in. It means there is a proper legal process for dealing with an individual who through their own conduct has severed their connection with Australians. Our nationality and citizenship act has been in place since 1948, only 47 years after Federation. The legislation in place now, the Australian Citizenship Act 2007, is a new iteration of that. Many of us in this chamber, of course, when considering the status of our own citizenship and/or dual citizenship in the run-up to running for preselection or for election to this place, have had to have a close look at the interaction of this set of laws with the laws of other countries and their approach to these questions. So senators and members have more knowledge about the interaction of citizenship of other countries with their own citizenship. Many of us in this room have navigated the travails of making sure that we have only one citizenship in place. But, for the small cohort—people like Mr Benbrika and others—who have committed offences that are described and set out in legislation, I think all Australians would be united in a view that we need a legally robust, defendable citizenship regime that makes sure that, when someone severs the bonds of citizenship with Australia, we have a practical way of dealing with it. I commend the legislation to the Senate.