Rearrangement

Tony Burke

I rise to advise members on the order of proceedings as they will now occur. The Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment (Prohibited Hate Symbols and Other Measures) Bill 2023 is still being debated in the Federation Chamber. My intention is not to bring that back to here until around 7 pm. In the interim, in a moment I will call on the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Repudiation) Bill 2023, and once that is concluded we will bring back the Economic Inclusion Advisory Committee Bill 2023. In respect of the Australian Citizenship Amendment (Citizenship Repudiation) Bill 2023, I move the contingency motion on the Notice Paper:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent:

(1) debate on the second reading resuming immediately, with the time limit for Members speaking being five minutes; and

(2) the second reading debate continuing for no longer than one hour, after which the bill being passed through all its stages without delay.

Given that some people are going to be here quite late tonight, I think people know why I'm doing it. There will be different views, but I'll leave it at that.

Paul Fletcher

In the interest of facilitating this matter, as the opposition has agreed with the government that we will, I won't speak for long, although I do indicate that the opposition will be calling a division on this motion because it is very bad practice to be crunching down debate in this way. That has been our consistent position; we've been maintaining that. I also move:

That all words in paragraph (1) after "immediately" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"with the time limit for the Member for Wannon being 10 minutes, and the time limit for all other Members speaking being five minutes".

The merits of that motion speak for themselves, given the excellence of the member for Wannon, so I won't speak to it further.

Adam Bandt

This is outrageous! We are dealing with one of the most fundamental questions, which is whether someone remains a citizen of this country, and we've got a bill that was introduced without notice, with less than a day to look at it, and now we're being asked to debate it and vote on it in an hour. This isn't even legislation that's responding to a decision that happened yesterday; this has been in the works for some time, and it's on a critical issue. It's on one of the most fundamental issues in a democracy that respects the rule of law, namely, whether someone who's a citizen of this country loses that citizenship. We are being told we have to rush it through parliament and we don't even have the usual time to debate it—to have a committee scrutinise it, to have a Senate committee look at it and for us to get the advice from it, to be able to go and talk to lawyers about what the implications are of this, to understand whether there are going to be unintended consequences of doing it and to work out how it impacts on children. And we are dealing with some of the most tricky of circumstances, about people who are alleged to have done things and what you do with them.

These are questions that rightly should occupy this House. How do we deal with this? How do we balance the basic principles of citizenship and keeping the community safe, before you do one of the most fundamental things, which is take away someone's citizenship? And what do we get? Not a sober presentation of a bill through the usual processes, with the time to debate it. No. We get a bill introduced without notice, less than a day to look at it and an hour to debate it. This is outrageous, and it should send shivers down the spine of everyone in this country who is concerned about the rule of law. It's one of the most fundamental issues, the bedrock of democracy in this country, and we get an hour to debate it—and, as a result, someone can lose their citizenship!

Something as critical as this deserves more than a knee-jerk reaction and rushed process. There's absolutely no reason that has been given from the government about why that process has been circumvented. We had the minister stand up and say there could only be an hour for debate, and there was no justification given. Why? Why does this debate have to be truncated to an hour? Why couldn't this bill have been introduced before and put through the normal processes given how significant it is, given how much lead time there has been and given how long people in the department have had to consider the implications of this?

I said, a week or so ago, you have always got to worry and watch out when it comes to the end of the year, because that is the time that governments, often with the opposition's support, will collude together and ram through stuff in the hope that no-one is watching. What I didn't think was that we'd be in a situation where a Labor government will come along and say, 'Here's a law that could have an implication to strip someone's citizenship, and we're going to give you an hour to debate it because we're going to do a deal with the coalition and ram something through.'

All of us here in this place are entitled to proper, sober consideration of such a fundamentally important bill, and it looks like we're not going to get it. It looks like we're going to have something rushed through. If the government can do this on something so fundamental as a person's right to citizenship, on a question about how to interpret High Court legislation and on the relationship between the High Court and the parliament, then I am very worried about what else is in store.

I accept that these are real issues that need to be grappled with, and I accept that when the High Court hands down a decision that it is incumbent on the government to consider how to respond to that decision and if necessary bring legislation to parliament. That's the way these things work. But we are dealing here with legislation that has such profound impacts that we are entitled to consider it and we are entitled to time to consider it. There may well be worthwhile moves in what the government is doing, but we just don't know because people who have the right to consider this legislation and advise on it are just not been given that opportunity.

One of the things that we saw at the last election was that the government's vote went backwards, and we now have a situation in this country where less than a third of the people vote for the government, a bit more than a third vote for the opposition and about a third vote for someone else. Part of the reason for that is that people are fed up with this country being run like a joke and members of the public being treated like mushrooms and being told: 'Here's a piece of legislation. You've got less than a day to look at it. But just trust us; it's going to be fine. Oh, by the way, it might take away someone's citizenship, but don't worry about it. We've done it in a rush. We're not going to give you time to debate it. But, no, it could never have any unintended consequences. It could never flow on.'

We've had a rushed piece of legislation one week. At the same time, that then has had to be tidied up with another rushed piece of legislation a couple of days later. In the short time that we've been here in this final sitting in the lead-up to Christmas, we have already seen errors being brought in that have to be tidied up again, so why should we have any confidence that what is being put before us doesn't also contain the same errors? We just haven't been given the time to look at it.

I really urge the government to rethink this. Rethink this approach that is treating the public and the parliament and the third of the country that wants scrutiny and integrity in politics with such contempt. They don't even have time to go and seek advice and consider one of the most fundamental things that people in this parliament will be asked to adjudicate on. I ask the government, please, to reconsider rushing this through. Reconsider this process that says that members of this parliament get an hour to debate one of the most fundamental issues that many of them might ever debate. I'll repeat the point: if you can do this in such a rush with something like this, it should a shiver down the spine of anyone in this country, because who knows what else is coming down the line.

Zoe Daniel

It's been a long day and a long year, and I wouldn't be standing to raise these points if I didn't think they were important. I think there's some irony in the fact that the Leader of the House has just announced an extended debate, understandably on hate speech legislation, this evening, yet we're being given one hour to debate a really important piece of legislation, and it's a worthwhile conversation to have.

This legislation relates to two court cases in regard to Benbrika v Minister for Home Affairs, but it's not retrospective. The fact that Benbrika's situation will change around Christmas time will not even be affected by this bill, so I fail to understand the level of urgency and I worry that we're not going to have a full and frank conversation about the potential unintended consequences of this legislation.

The Leader of the Australian Greens has made the point that it's very difficult to get the kind of advice required to vote on this in the time frame given. We're also not allowed to even attempt to amend the bill, so in many cases anything we say about it is moot. But I have spoken to lawyers in the last hour and a half, and they've told me that there are potential unintended consequences and that this legislation, as written, could be subject to a constitutional challenge. So we'd then end up back in the High Court, which is exactly the point of the bill. This is becoming a bad habit of this government, particularly on these sensitive matters of human rights. This is not what we should be doing.

Milton Dick

The question is that the amendment be agreed to.