Stripping citizenship from sole nationals would face legal problems, expert says
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Version 0 of 1. A proposal to suspend some citizenship rights of sole Australian nationals could effectively introduce a “new form of conditional citizenship” and would face legal problems, constitutional law expert George Williams has said. Measures to require suspected foreign fighters to negotiate their return to the country by providing a “full and accurate account of their actions overseas” to “overcome the difficulty of securing a court conviction”, were reported by The Australian on Saturday. The report suggests that because the measures under consideration do not prevent sole nationals returning “forever”, laws would not technically render an Australian citizen stateless. The government has already introduced legislation to strip dual nationals of citizenship for certain terrorism offences inside and outside of Australia. However, the proposal to strip sole Australian nationals of citizenship rights is currently contained in a discussion paper released by the government, though there is little detail about that legislation. Williams told Guardian Australia said any proposal would again face “international law problems” over the possibility of rendering someone stateless. “It is interesting that the government is still pushing hard on the current [dual national] bill on the angle of retrospectivity and also extending it to single nationals,” he said. “The government have apparently not been put off by concerns raised about the problems in the current bill which is quite radical and this idea would take it much further again.” The University of New South Wales professor said it was hard to see how such a proposal would work, adding that it would likely be challenged in the courts. “Effectively it would introduce a new form of conditional citizenship,” he said. “The government would face a range of similar constitutional issues [as current legislation to strip dual nationals] and it might be challenged in the courts.” On Saturday, prime minister Tony Abbott refused to rule out stripping sole citizens of their right to return to Australia. “The legislation that is before the parliament now obviously gives us a way of now saying to dual nationals, ‘you are never coming back’,” said Abbott. “We need ways of dealing with those who are not dual nationals and, as I said, just as going abroad to fight with the death cult is the modern form of treason, perhaps to deal with it we need the modern form of banishment.” The debate around the ABC’s Q&A program continued as three separate attacks occurred in Tunisia, Kuwait and France on Friday. After the events on Saturday, Abbott declared: “the Daesh death cult has claimed responsibility for one of the attacks. It seems that one of the other attacks was inspired by Daesh. “This illustrates, yet again, that as far as the Daesh death cult is concerned, it is coming after us. We may not always feel that we are at war with them, but they certainly think that they are at war with us.” It is still unclear if all three attacks were linked. When asked if the attacks meant there was an increased threat in Australia, Tony Abbott confirmed that the security level had already been raised from medium to high well before the attacks. “Some time ago we raised the threat level from medium to high and that regrettably means that attacks are expected because there are people with the intention and the capability of carrying out attacks,” Abbott said. “As we know the death cult is regularly admonishing its supporters and sympathisers around the world to kill – that is what it is doing. Regrettably, as we saw in France, all you need for terrorism these days is a knife, a flag, a camera phone and a victim.” Also on Sunday, Malcolm Turnbull foreshadowed formal recommendations for policy changes at the ABC as a result of the government’s investigation into Q&A and renewed his attack on the national broadcaster, accusing it of “undergraduate ... tabloid journalism”. The communications minister said the ABC had a “higher duty” than other media organisations to be accurate, impartial and objective because of its statutory obligations. “Under section eight of the act, the minister has the power to write a letter and make recommendations of policy which the board can either accept or ignore,” said Turnbull. “Now it may be that I do make some formal recommendations. It may be that once the facts are exposed the conclusions are so obvious, the ABC takes it up. “One thing that is perfectly obvious is the security protocols around the assembling of the Q&A audience has got to be improved.” Speaking on ABC’s Insiders, Turnbull accused presenter Barrie Cassidy of “losing the plot” if he did not think there were security issues around allowing Zaky Mallah into a live Q&A audience. Related: Malcolm Turnbull flags formal proposals for ABC changes during fiery interview Mallah has been convicted and served a jail sentence for making death threats against Asio officials. He has also tweeted that two female journalists should be publicly raped. Tony Abbott last week accused the the ABC of betraying Australia by allowing Mallah in the audience and both the ABC and the communications department are instigating two separate investigations. “Seriously, you’ve lost the plot there with all due respect,” Turnbull said to Cassidy. “This is a high-profile audience, it’s a very high-profile target. This is a fellow that has threatened violence in the past, threatened to kill people, gone to jail for it, been involved in buying ammunition, buying a gun.” Cassidy asked “why is he walking the streets if that’s the case?” Turnbull said: “Because he served his term of imprisonment and he hasn’t committed another offence but that doesn’t mean that you would then consciously and willingly put that person in a very high-profile environment on a live television program.” Turnbull said the government’s main responsibility was to protect Australians, which he said was why the ABC Q&A program’s inclusion of Mallah was “such a mistake”. Labor’s Mark Butler said while editorial independence was “an important part of our entire system of media”, an investigation was needed into the Q&A episode. “That needs to take place in a way that is calm, methodical and makes sure that all of those fantastic things we love about our national broadcaster are protected, while getting to the bottom of exactly what happened last Monday,” Butler said. |