All Peter Dutton Wants For Christmas Is New Powers To Strip Extremists Of Citizenship
They say the laws will be introduced by the end of the year.
The federal government just announced its plans for cooked new laws to strip Australian citizenship from anyone convicted of a terrorism offence, saying it wants these laws introduced before Christmas.
It also wants its encryption laws passed before Christmas — you know, the 180-page, dangerously vague bill that would give the Australian government unprecedented powers to force tech companies to break encryption and hand over data. According to Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, the government needs all of these new laws urgently, because of terrorism.
“People who commit acts of terrorism have rejected absolutely everything that this country stands for,” Scott Morrison said at a press conference today announcing the proposed laws.
“They have rejected the beliefs of this country, the values of this country, they have disrespected every other citizen who shares that privilege of citizenship with them. The stripping of Australian citizenship from dual nationals engaged in terrorist conduct is a key part of our response to international violent extremism and terrorism.”
The proposed new laws are a significant change to how things currently work, and a huge expansion of the powers of the Minister for Home Affairs, Peter Dutton, who said today that people convicted of terror offences “have betrayed the country and surrendered what it means to be an Australian citizen through their actions”.
At the moment Dutton is only empowered to strip citizenship from people convicted of terror offences with a sentence of six years or longer. The new laws, by comparison, will empower Dutton to strip Australian citizenship from people convicted of any terrorism offence, including more minor offences.
only "reasonably satisfied" they have another citizenship? What happens if they're wrong, and the person has no other citizenship? We're just going to be rendering people stateless? https://t.co/BwU0Tys7q2
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) November 22, 2018
The other really concerning aspect of the proposed laws is the requirement for the government to be just “reasonably satisfied” that the person they’re stripping citizenship from has, or is entitled to, another citizenship.
It’s illegal to render somebody stateless, so citizenship can only be stripped from people who hold citizenship of another country — if the bar is lowered to being just “reasonably satisfied” that someone holds a second citizenship, these new laws stray dangerously close to making people stateless.
Dutton announced today that so far, under the current laws, he’s revoked the Australian citizenship of nine people convicted of terror-related offences. It’s unclear how many people would be vulnerable to deportation under the proposed changes.
Oh, and the government’s push to introduce its legislation before Christmas means Parliament is going to have very little time to scrutinise it before the sitting year ends. None of this is dystopian at all.