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

I move:

Business of the Senate notice of motion No. 2, standing in my name for today, proposing the disallowance of the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Concessional Application Fees) Regulations 2018.

Senators could be forgiven for thinking that this is groundhog day, because there has been a pattern of behaviour established, firstly, by government ministers who want to punish migrants, who want to attack multicultural Australia and who want to make it more difficult for people to become citizens, particularly people who are in financial difficulty; and, secondly, by the Senate.

We have seen the Senate time after time stand up against this government's divisive agenda. We saw it first during the debate around section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, when this government and its coalition partners in One Nation tried to basically make it easier to be a racist in this country by either abolishing completely or, in some cases, watering down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Section 18C, of course, is the section of that act that protects against race based hate speech in Australia.

We've seen that pattern repeated through the divisive changes proposed by then immigration minister, Peter Dutton, to citizenship legislation, which would have drastically extended the length of time that an applicant needed to be a permanent resident before their application for citizenship could be considered and which attempted to introduce a university-level English language test. Remember the hallmark of the White Australia policy, which many of us believed and hoped that we had left behind forever, was, in fact, a language test that was applied in a particularly unfair way in order to give effect to the then bipartisan policy position of supporting a White Australia. We had, again, the Senate standing up in support of a motion moved by the Australian Greens striking that legislation off the Notice Paper late last year.

We have also seen that pattern more recently through the government's attempt to restrict family reunion visas to wealthy people by increasing the assurance of support that people need to provide before they can have their applications for family reunion visas considered. And, again, once the Australian Greens had put a motion forward to disallow those changes, and once the numbers had coalesced against the government, we saw the minister having the good sense to withdraw those changes in a negotiated outcome with the Australian Greens before the government were defeated in this place.

And now here we are, with the government trying to remove concession fees for people applying for citizenship. It's important to understand the changes that are in the instrument that the motion before the house is seeking to disallow. Previously, pensioners, healthcare card holders and veterans' affairs concession card holders were able to pay either $20 or $40 to apply for citizenship. This is instead of the $285 full fee. With the stroke of a pen, Minister Dutton has basically tried to erase these concessions. This is trademark arrogance from Minister Dutton, and it's a repeat of a pattern of behaviour where he tries to kick migrants and multicultural Australia in the guts and hopes that no-one notices or, if they do, hopes that no-one will stand up to him.

The Australian Greens have led the charge against Minister Dutton on every occasion, and we've held the line. It's worth recalling the massive community backlash against the government's attempts to water down section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. It's worth recalling there was a massive backlash from multicultural Australia in particular to the government's attempts to make it far more difficult to become a citizen in this country and to apply a university-level English test that applicants would be required to pass before they could become citizens. It's worth recalling the massive groundswell of support for the Australian Greens' motion to disallow the changes to assurances of support. What I want to say about those things—again, in the context of the motion that we're discussing today—is that these are the Australian people standing up and making it clear that they're not prepared to accept this kind of divisive and hate-filled agenda from the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, and more recently in his new role as the Minister for Home Affairs.

So as the Australian people have stood up and as the Australian people have rallied around the moves that the Australian Greens have made to hold the line against this divisive agenda, so we've seen other senators come to the party and stand up for multiculturalism and for multicultural Australia. I do want to thank the Labor Party, I want to thank the Centre Alliance party and I want to thank other senators who have supported our previous motions to strike off legislation or disallow instruments that had been made. And in the context of this motion, which I believe does have the numbers to pass the Senate this evening, I want to thank those people—Labor, the Centre Alliance party and Senator Hinch, as well as one of our newest senators, Senator Storer—for indicating their support for this motion. All of these senators, all of the political parties that I've mentioned in thanking people, and the Australian Greens are doing what we're doing because we believe that it reflects the fact that most Australians fundamentally believe in fairness. They believe in a fair go; they believe in helping people who are doing it tough. They want to see migrants be given the chance to succeed in our society.

We know about the story that has been quite prominent in the media over the last four months, the story of the family from Biloela who were ripped from their beds in the predawn hours and who have languished in immigration detention ever since. We know, importantly, from the response from the Biloela community to that change of events, that Australians do believe in a fair go and they believe in multiculturalism and they understand and celebrate the contribution that people from right around the world have made to our country through the period of our European history.

Australians don't believe in putting unfair barriers in people's way. They don't believe in putting unnecessary hurdles in people's way and requiring them to jump them. But that's exactly what we're seeing time after time after time from this government: unfair barriers and unnecessary hurdles. Again, in the context of this debate, abolishing concessional rates for applications for citizenship hits hardest those who can least afford it. I've spoken about patterns of behaviour. This is another pattern of behaviour from this government. The government have a track record of punitive responses to people who are in financial difficulties. You only have to look at the way they treat people on unemployment benefits. We've seen the robo-debt saga, where people were extremely distressed to receive automatically generated debt notices in the mail from Centrelink, many of which didn't have a leg to stand on in terms of a relationship with reality. But, no, the government go ahead and continue to try to punish and make life difficult for people who are already facing the highest level of difficulties in their lives.

We've seen the attacks on multiculturalism, we've seen the attacks on multicultural Australia, we've seen the pattern of attacking people who are doing it tough, and the instrument that this motion seeks to disallow fits all of those patterns. It is an attack on multiculturalism; it is an attack on multicultural Australia. It's designed specifically to make it more difficult for more people to become citizens of Australia and it repeats the pattern of behaviour we've seen from this government where they take some glee, it seems, in making life harder for people who already have far too many challenges in their lives.

While the government believe in unfair barriers and unnecessary hurdles, the Greens do not. We believe in things like fairness, we believe in things like decency and we believe in things like not just respecting diversity but celebrating diversity. It's diversity that makes this country what it is. It's diversity that we should be celebrating and encouraging, not criticising and trying to discourage. We'll stand on the side of fairness, we'll stand on the side of diversity, we'll stand on the side of multiculturalism and we'll stand up—and our track record shows conclusively that we do—against this government's divisive political agenda, attacking multicultural Australia and attacking people who are doing it tough.

I thank the senators who will shortly support this motion and say to them that, together in this chamber today—democracy in action; a chamber where the government cannot, through sheer weight of numbers, determine on its own an outcome—we will again strike a blow for fairness, a blow for diversity, a blow for multicultural Australia and a blow for this government that appears to understand none of those concepts.

Carol Brown (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Disability and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Labor supports this disallowance motion. The proposal by the government is unnecessary and unfair. The current Australian Citizenship Regulation 2016 provides for concession rates of $20 to $40 for citizenship for migrant pensioners, veterans, widows and some others who qualify under schedule 3 of the regulation. This change will remove those concessions. So, from 1 July 2018, groups such as migrant pensioners, veterans and widows will have to pay the full fee of $285 when applying for citizenship. The government wants increased fees for migrant pensioners, veterans and widows to go from between $20 and $40 to $285.

The aim of the concessions is to provide greater access to Australian citizenship for those of disadvantaged backgrounds. The Minister for Home Affairs lodged the legislative instrument on 7 June to repeal these concessions. It specifically repeals table items 10 to 13 and 17 of schedule 3. There is no other way to describe these changes than unfair, unnecessary and mean-spirited. These changes mostly affect those holding pensioner concession cards who receive forms of welfare, including Newstart, pension, disability support or parenting payment. We're talking about veterans with pensioner cards who receive income support payments, including payments for aged service, invalid service or partner service, also losing their ability to access a discount.

In 2016-17 a total of 137,750 people became Australian citizens by conferral from at least 190 different countries. This measure is expected to affect three per cent of applications. This change aligns with the broader government agenda to attack migrants and reduce the number of new citizens. In June last year the government also tried to change the rules around people acquiring Australian citizenship, in introducing the Australian Citizenship Amendment Bill 2017. Despite significant changes being proposed, the government could not provide any evidence that the changes were based on anything other than a report by Mr Philip Ruddock and Senator Fierravanti-Wells. The community opposed this bill, Labor opposed the bill, and it was struck off the Notice Paper last October.

Over 10,000 submissions were lodged with the citizenship bill inquiry and only a small number were in favour of the changes, one of those being from Minister Dutton's own department. The inquiry heard stories about the sense of belonging and community that citizenship gives to new migrants. Evidence given in the inquiry found that over two million Australians would not pass the proposed English language test either. These unfair changes would increase the pathway to citizenship to over 10 years, causing unnecessary delays to good people. The university English test would result in a permanent underclass where people live in Australia permanently but never get to pledge allegiance to Australia and become a citizen.

The proposed legislation also stated that a person could be deemed as having competent English if they were a passport holder of the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, Canada, the United States of America or New Zealand. The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights report said in regard to the university-level English test that 'the measure appears likely to be incompatible with the right to equality and nondiscrimination'. The report also confirmed Labor's questions around the evidence base and the rationale provided by the government to justify the unfair measures, stating that some outcomes could be averse to social cohesion and 'concerns remain that the measure may not be rationally connected to its stated objective'. The citizenship test is already in English, and Labor supports people having conversational-level English. Minister Dutton proposed to increase the English language level requirement to level 6 university-level English. That failed. Now Minister Tudge has talked about reintroducing the legislation with a lower level of English needed for applicants to pass the language test.

Recently in Senate estimates when asked whether the department was providing information to Minister Tudge on citizenship, the department confirmed it was. When asked whether further research into the English language requirement for new citizens had been undertaken or sought, the department took the question on notice. This reveals that the government's proposed citizenship legislation is policy on the run—mean spirited and unfounded thought bubbles formed firstly by Minister Dutton and now by Minister Tudge. The government has been unable to illustrate why these changes are still under consideration. Labor has always said that people need to pledge allegiance to Australia and commit to the values of the nation, but we don't support unfair changes that have no credible basis.

I will take a few minutes to turn to Mr Tudge's claims. In speeches and in media Minister Tudge has claimed that he has focused on cohesion to avoid, and I quote, 'parallel' communities and that there was a reduced level of English capability. These claims were questioned in a The Sydney Morning Herald article by Jacqueline Maley on the weekend:

Tudge cited a scary statistic - he said that by 2021, Australia will be home to 1 million people who either don't speak English well, or don't speak it at all.

He reached the 1 million figure by extrapolating from Australian Bureau of Statistics data, which shows that in 2006, about 560,000 people in Australia did not speak English well or at all. By 2016, the figure was almost 820,000, which sounds like a lot.

But as the minister later acknowledged, these figures are absolute - as the population grows, and the overall number of migrants increases, so will the number of people whose English is poor.

That doesn't mean the problem (if you see a lack of English proficiency as a problem, and many don't) is worsening. It's more instructive to look at the proportion of migrants who don't speak English well or at all.

According to the minister, that proportion has increased, from 18.6 per cent of new migrants in 2006, to 24 per cent of migrants in 2016.

But an alternative analysis of the same data, by Ingrid Piller, a professor of applied linguistics at Macquarie University, shows the proportion of people who speak English not well or not at all has actually declined slightly. Piller finds that in 2006, 17.5 per cent of migrants spoke poor English, and in 2016, the proportion was 16.6 per cent.

Minister Tudge also quotes the Scanlon report in his speeches. The part he forgets to quote is that the report also found that 83 per cent of respondents agreed that multiculturalism has been good for Australia. It's this kind of selective reporting that Minister Dutton tried to push and failed, and which now Minister Tudge is pushing.

We also see an attack on citizenship through neglect. Since March 2016 processing times for citizenship applications have increased from 12 to 16 months. The department confirmed this extension of wait times for applicants and said it had hired some staff to assist with processing applications. The department has also confirmed that complaints regarding citizenship applications have increased. The delays are causing distress and hurting people who have spent years in Australia studying, working, buying a house and raising children. All they want is to be able to pledge allegiance to this country and live here as citizens.

Labor cannot and will not support the changes by the government. We support the disallowance motion. We want it to be on the record that modern Australia and multicultural Australia are the same thing. Anyone who thinks differently is living in the past and, in the case of the government, is trying to create division for political purposes only.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Minister for International Development and the Pacific) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government opposes this disallowance. I heard both Senator McKim and Senator Brown, and, as somebody who has spent over 35 years in what is multicultural and diverse Australia, I have to say that some of the assertions that were made by both Senator McKim and Senator Brown are plainly wrong.

Since World War II, this government has welcomed 7.5 million migrants, including about 850,000 under our humanitarian program. Indeed, my parents were part of that migrant cohort that came to Australia. The reality is that any examination of issues pertinent to citizenship English and English language is vitally important. When we were predominantly a manufacturing based economy, English was not as important, but today English is very important.

Also, this disallowance motion is not about the sorts of things that both Senator McKim and Senator Brown were talking about. This is, plain and simple, about citizenship applications fees. Currently, citizenship application fees do not cover the increasing costs of administering the program. These changes will in some part offset that rise. The changing profile of applicants—including those with complex identity issues that need to be assessed—and strengthened integrity screening, biometrics capture and regional testing have all have driven the increased costs. It should be noted that the costs of applying for Australian citizenship is significantly lower—and I want to stress that—than comparable OECD countries. In the UK it is $1,995, in the United States it's $940, in Canada it's $595 and in New Zealand it's $440. Also, only three per cent of applicants were eligible for a concession over the past year. So, the figures Senator Brown and Senator McKim have sought to tell us about this evening are totally overblown.

Scott Ryan (President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the disallowance motion moved by Senator McKim be agreed to.