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senate vote 2015-12-03#10
Edited by
mackay staff
on
2015-12-10 10:51:12
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Title
Bills — Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015; in Committee- Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 - in Committee - Add a sunset clause
Description
<p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>Senator Brandis, when you cancel someone's citizenship and deport them back to wherever they have come from, have you done any modelling on the likelihood of them picking up a weapon and putting a bullet through one of our soldiers, because that is exactly what you are doing?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p>- The majority voted against an [amendment](http://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2015-12-03.271.1) introduced by Liberal Democratic Party Senator [David Leyonhjelm](https://theyvoteforyou.org.au/people/senate/nsw/david_leyonhjelm). In other words, the majority did *not* want to add a new [sunset clause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunset_provision) to the [bill](http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:legislation/billhome/r5507).
- ### What is a sunset clause?
- A sunset clause puts a limit on how long parts of the bill (or maybe even the whole bill) can be in force without being considered again by Parliament. For example, Leyonhjelm's proposed sunset clause would have meant that the sections he mentioned would stop being law after ten years. At that point, if the Parliament wanted the sections to continue, they would have to re-introduce them.
- Read [Senator Leyonhjelm's speech](http://www.openaustralia.org.au/senate/?gid=2015-12-03.271.1) to learn why he thought a sunset clause was needed.
- ### What is this bill all about?
- The main idea of the bill is to remove the Australian citizenship of a [dual national](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_citizenship) in certain situations, including if they fight for or serve a terrorist organisation (read more in the [bills digest](http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/bd/bd1516a/16bd015) and [ABC News](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-27/citizenship-stripped-under-new-laws-explainer/6500280)).
- ### Wording of Leyonhjelm's amendment
- > *(1) Schedule 1, page 18 (after line 27), after item 7, insert:*
- > *7A After section 53*
- > *Insert:*
- >> *53A Sunset provision*
- >> *(1) Sections 33AA, 35, 35AA, 35AB, 35A, 35B and 36A cease to have effect at the end of 10 years after this section commences.*
- >> *(2) The regulations may prescribe matters of a transitional nature (including prescribing any saving or application provisions) arising out of the provisions mentioned in subsection (1) ceasing to have effect in accordance with that subsection.*
<p>Senator Lambie, the people to whom this act will apply are people who have committed terrorist crimes. They are people who have the propensity to behave in that way. That is, by the way, why we do not want them in Australia. That is why we do not want them in our streets and in our suburbs. When they are deported, they will be placed into the hands of the government of the other nation of which they are dual citizens, and it will be for that government to deal with them and to take whatever action, according to its domestic law, it seems appropriate to take. Senator Lambie, you say that these people might put a bullet into one of our soldiers. These are people who might put a bullet into one of our soldiers or one of our civilians. We do not want them on our streets. That is the purpose of this bill.</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>So, if the terrorist act is here, you cancel their dual citizenship and then you send them overseas?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>This is the point I was trying to explain yesterday. Under section 33AA, we do not cancel their citizenship; they renounce their citizenship by engaging in conduct which the act treats as manifest evidence that they no longer have an allegiance to Australia. This is why the bill is called the 'allegiance to Australia' bill.</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>Yes, but what I am asking you, Attorney, is: if they do that act on Australian soil, they renounce their citizenship and you send them back to wherever they have come from? So, if they have come from the Middle East, you are actually going to send them back to a country from the Middle East? That is what I am trying to clarify. We already know that governments over there are corrupt. Who is to say that they are not going to be given a weapon, pick up a weapon and go back and fight against our soldiers?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>Well, this applies of course to all dual citizens, without differentiation as to the country of their other citizenship. To use your example, let us say they were a dual citizen of Syria and Australia; if the person concerned engages in terrorist conduct and thereby renounces their allegiance to Australia and loses their Australian citizenship, they still have their Syrian citizenship, and in those circumstances we would deport them to Syria, into the hands of the Syrian government. The point I make to you, Senator Lambie, is: do you really want these people at large, walking around in the streets and suburbs of Australia, or do you want them in a jail in Syria?</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>No. You know what I would do? It is as corrupt as hell over there in Syria. You will not have any idea. They might be put over to the authorities. You will have no idea whether they are going to be released in 24 hours. That is out of your hands. So Australia now has gone into the business of exporting terrorists. That is what we are doing. Have you put a tax on that, because effectively that is what we are doing. Why would you do that? Is this the best you can do to fight terrorism?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>Senator Lambie, as I think you know, we do a great many things to fight terrorism, including the deployment of Australian forces in the international coalition to defeat and destroy ISIL, and many brave Australian service men and women are deployed in that international coalition, both in assisting and training the Iraqi Army and in the RAAF as part of the international coalition of air forces that are striking ISIL positions in northern Iraq and now in Syria as well. We do many things to fight terrorism, but one of the ways in which we need to thwart terrorism is to ensure that there are no terrorists on our streets. The way we do that is to ensure that we have strong criminal laws and well-resourced police and intelligence agencies that can arrest those people and put them on trial and put them before courts and lock them up. But this is a belt-and-braces approach, and another way we can seek to thwart terrorism is to ensure that people who are citizens of nations other than Australia lose their Australian citizenship and, as you say, can be—you used the word 'deported'—placed in the hands of the government of the other nation of which they are citizens. Senator Lambie, I do not think you would find very many people in Australia who think that we should not be doing everything we can to take terrorists off the streets of this country.</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>That is not what I am saying. But what you are doing is you are actually putting them on other people's streets and you are giving them the opportunity to kill our men and women in uniform. That is what you are doing. You know what? Why don't you (a) put them in jail 23 hours a day for the rest of their life or (b) give the courts the option of using the death penalty? Wouldn't that be a much better option?</p><p>Overnight or in the last few days, we have heard news that the US are deploying extra special service troops in northern Iraq so that they can work with the Kurdish forces in their collective fight against ISIS. So what has happened in reality is that our major military partner, the US, is teaming up with a group of people who your government says are official terrorists. Is that correct?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>There are a couple of things to say about that. First, in relation to your first observation, Senator Lambie, the Australian government has for a very long time now—and this is a policy adopted by both sides of politics—opposed the death penalty, and we make representations to other countries of our position. And we, through various other measures in our international engagements—for example, through policing agencies—do everything we can to stop the death penalty. There are lots of Australians—you are obviously one—who believe in the death penalty, but this country, as a matter of government policy, does not support the death penalty. Nor do I.</p><p>Let me add to something I said to you in relation to the renunciation-by-conduct provisions. Sections 33AA and 35 apply to people who are dual citizens who are actually already overseas, so the suggestion that we are sending them overseas in fact is not germane. That part of the provisions of this bill assumes that the person is already overseas, because if they are at home then they are dealt with under section 35A. But if they are overseas they are dealt with by sections 33AA or 35.</p><p>I have seen the media reports in relation to what the United States is doing to expand its mission somewhat in the Middle East. The Australian government's commitment is, as was announced by the previous Prime Minister, an advise and assist mission with the Iraqi defence force, and it is a contribution to the air mission conducted by the RAAF in coalition with the United States and several other nations.</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>Bringing you back to the fact that you have the PKK along with ISIS listed as official terrorists on the proscribed list referred to in this legislation, isn't it the case that you have admitted your government does not treat all terrorist organisations on the list equally?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>No, that is not right, Senator Lambie. The consequences of an organisation being declared as a terrorist organisation under the provisions of the Criminal Code are uniform. They are the same for any organisation and the same consequences apply and the same criminal offence provisions and penalties apply to a person who is a member of such a declared terrorist organisation. In relation to this particular bill, though, it is right to say that the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection may list, from the list of declared terrorist organisations, organisations to which these provisions apply. So it is at least theoretically possible that there could be organisations on the list of declared terrorist organisations declared by me, on the advice of ASIO under the Criminal Code, that would not be declared by the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection for the purposes of the operation of these provisions.</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>So on the one hand Australia is supplying the PKK with arms and food and, on the other hand, we are bombing ISIS. Can you see a day when Australian forces will bomb Kurdish targets—given that the PKK is on our official terrorist list?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>Senator Lambie, our mission is to defeat and destroy ISIL.</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>Do you think we can reach a political decision with ISIS involved at the table?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>No, Senator Lambie, and no Australian government minister has suggested that that is a way in which this conflict is going to move to a resolution.</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>Would you be saying then, or do you think, the only way we can solve the differences between ISIS and Australia is on the battlefield? Or do we negotiate a solution with terrorists?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>This is a battlefield conflict, Senator. Australia's engagement in the Middle East is a military engagement and we are, as I keep saying to you, determined to defeat and destroy ISIL on the battlefield. But we also have to, at the same time, protect our own domestic populations in Australia from ISIL-inspired domestic terrorism.</p> <p class="speaker">Jacqui Lambie</p><p>Overnight, as you have all seen, some UK politicians who have said that there must be dialogue with ISIS to solve this problem have compared ISIS to other terrorist organisations, like the IRA from Ireland and FARC from South America. Do you think it is valid to compare the ISIS terrorist crisis with the IRA and FARC terrorist crises where political solutions stop the violence and killings?</p> <p class="speaker">George Brandis</p><p>Senator, I think that is really a question that is beyond the scope of this debate, and my own views about the IRA and other terrorist organisations existing elsewhere in the world at different periods in the history of the 20th century are really not, I suspect, either well informed or germane to this debate. You are asking me about ISIL; we are dealing with ISIL in a particular way. We are dealing with it militarily in coalition with our partners in the United States, in Europe, in Russia—the entire world, Senator Lambie, not just the Western world, not just the democratic world. The entire world—virtually every nation of the world—is united in determination to defeat and destroy ISIL. That is why, in September last year, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 2178—which, if not unanimous was certainly near to unanimous in calling on all nations to assist in the destruction of ISIL. That is why, when in February of this year I went to the White House Summit on Countering Violent Extremism and we discussed ways in which to defeat ISIL-inspired domestic terrorism, what was very striking to me was that the entire world was represented. Virtually every country in the world was in that conference chamber. There were countries that were actually at war with one another that were sitting beside one another in this conference chamber because virtually the entire world is united in its determination to defeat and destroy ISIL.</p> <p class='motion-notice motion-notice-truncated'>Long debate text truncated.</p>
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