Murray Watt (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you, Senator Cash. If anyone observing this debate was in any doubt that this is all just a political exercise from the opposition, I think we've seen once and for all that that's exactly what's going on here with Senator Cash's most recent contribution. Yet again, rather than actually trying to work with the government to get through legislation that is constitutional—what an amazing concept for the coalition that you might have laws that are constitutional and stand up in court!—and to ensure that these laws are robust and can stand up in court, unlike the laws that they passed when they were in government, they want to insert new amendments for the sole purpose of launching the kind of political attacks that we just saw from Senator Cash.

I'll come back to the point about judicial review of decisions, but, just to deal with the coalition's amendments that they've circulated, they're political amendments that have been submitted only for the purpose of lodging another political wedge. I guess maybe their purpose is to ensure that these laws are unconstitutional, because that's what the effect would be. What the government is doing here is not just putting in place a process to legally strip someone of their citizenship. We are actually expanding the number of offences that the power applies to. Under the current legislation that was brought in by Mr Dutton, which was deemed to be unconstitutional, someone could have their citizenship stripped if they were convicted of one of a number of offences, including terrorism, treason and advocating mutiny. What we are doing is adding additional points to do with convictions for things like espionage, foreign interference, foreign incursions and recruitment. What you'll see about all of those offences is that they have one thing in common: they go to someone's allegiance to Australia.

They are not firearms offences. They are not general criminal offences. They are offences that go directly to someone's allegiance to Australia, and that is the key to ensuring that these amendments remain constitutional.

The very serious risk that we face if this parliament agrees to the amendments that the coalition has circulated is that, yet again, we will be passing a bill that is unconstitutional and doesn't work. What we want to do, and what I think most senators in this chamber want to do, is put in place a system that allows for someone to be stripped of their citizenship when they commit offences that go against the interests of Australia, that show they don't have an allegiance to Australia. The very worst thing we could do is repeat the error of Mr Dutton and the coalition, who passed laws that were unconstitutional and that overreached for the sake of making a political point. That is what the coalition is yet again asking us to do in seeking to add to this bill over 50 extra offences that bear no resemblance whatsoever to the key point about someone's allegiance to Australia and, therefore, to whether they are entitled to have Australian citizenship. One of the offences that have been included by the opposition that would see someone stripped of their citizenship is the transporting of a firearm across a state border. I agree that is a serious offence and someone should pay the price for committing that offence, but it doesn't amount to repudiating someone's allegiance to Australia, and that is what is necessary to justify someone's citizenship being stripped from them and for that law to stand up court.

We can all come in here and make political points and add all sorts of offences to make us look tougher, but what you would be doing is trying, yet again, to pass laws that are unconstitutional. I really would have thought the coalition would have learned its lessons. They've got it wrong twice in passing such laws when they were in office, when they passed laws that were unconstitutional. What they're asking us to do today is ignore the constitutional risk for the sake of making a political point. We all in this chamber think that people who commit child sex offences are depraved individuals who should be punished, but if we pass those amendments from the opposition, we risk this legislation falling over, just as the last bill Mr Dutton passed fell over and the one before that fell over, just for the sake of scoring a political point. That's why the government's view is that we should pass the bill that has been introduced and we should refer the amendments on the other offences that the coalition have put forward to the parliamentary joint committee so that they can be examined. If the advice comes back that they can be included and it's still constitutional, fine, we should do that, but we shouldn't jeopardise these laws and a process for stripping someone for their citizenship just to make a political point.

I might point out that we've attempted to brief Mr Tehan, who is the shadow minister, about the constitutionality of these extra offences. We scheduled a briefing with him yesterday. He cancelled the briefing and has refused to engage further. We have attempted to fix this matter. The opposition just play political points.