Julian Hill MP comments on Citizenship inquiry
Update
18 October 2017
The proposed citizenship changes will not be implemented after the Citizenship Amendment Bill was struck down by the Senate today. Oz Kiwi can now confirm that current citizenship law applies.
04 September 2017
Julian Hill, MP for Bruce (VIC), comments on the themes from submissions to the Senate Committee inquiry on the proposed Citizenship changes.
Oz Kiwi appeared at the Committee's Melbourne hearing on 25 August 2017.
The Senate Committee's report is due to be tabled in this week.
Julian Hill MP comments on the Citizenship inquiry
04 Septembeer 2017
The Citizenship inquiry by Senate Committee has concluded, into the Liberals' legislation to attack Australian citizenship.
Over 10,000 community submissions were received opposing the proposed changes. Only 2 were received in favour of the changes, from Peter Dutton's Department of Immigration and the Australian Monarchist League.
Amazingly, Peter Dutton's department admitted that migrants doing the Government-funded English language training course will fail the proposed new university level English test for citizenship.
Peter Dutton claims that the citizenship changes are needed to enhance Australia's national security. Yet his own Department couldn't provide any evidence that national security agencies such as ASIO or the AFP have sought to update the citizenship legislation for reason of national security.
Migrants will face an unfair extension of the time they must wait to apply for citizenship and must possess university level English to become a citizen.
Peter Dutton's department has not done any modelling on the effect of the new laws on international students.
Out of the 199,151 applications for citizenship over 2016-2017, 113,388 came from the skilled visa stream, while 51,549 were under the family stream, 19,860 humanitarian and 14,000 received under 'other'.
Evidence at public hearings across Australia show that this Government has no basis for these changes and is still not listenin`g to the community about the impact these changes will have on modern multicultural Australia.
Labor awaits the final report of the Senate Committee, and will keep working hard to see this appalling legislation defeated in the Senate.
Read Julian Hill's Facebook post.