Politics

The Fight To Stop Peter Dutton Becoming The Most Powerful Politician In Australia

Peter Dutton has proposed giving himself sweeping powers to over the lives of migrants and potential citizens.

by Chris Woods  13 June 2017
Peter Dutton

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You’d be forgiven for thinking our government’s erosion of immigrant rights and judicial oversight is focused pretty tightly on all those innocent people we’ve detained in offshore detention centres, but now a new citizenship reform package hitting Parliament demonstrates that no, the Liberal Party just doesn’t seem to like migrants generally.

The reforms are part of Malcolm Turnbull’s broader citizenship crackdown. This has previously included 457 visa changes and plans for a new citizenship test that would force new citizens to demonstrate allegiance to Australia and “Australian values” (political cowardice? Kowtowing to bigotry? That aforementioned torture of innocents?).

According to The Guardian, Turnbull will deliver a national security update this afternoon, flagging the introduction of the citizenship package. The pre-released statements are very heavy on the nationalism and, inexcusably, link immigration to crime:

“We should make no apology for asking those who seek to join our Australian family to join us as Australian patriots — committed to the values that define us, committed to the values that unite us.”

The proposed changes are coming as immigration minister Peter Dutton increasingly amasses discretionary “God Powers” over the fate of refugees. These include the ability to personally approve, refuse, or cancel asylum seeker visas; to detain or re-detain people without warning; to send people to offshore detention centres; and, increasingly, prevent reviews of decisions not to grant protection visas.

The government is now seeking to expand this almost-absolute control over the visa process to broader citizenship matters. The changes will see Dutton able to overrule citizenship decisions of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT). As an independent body established to review administrative decisions made by ministers, departments and agencies, the AAT is one of the few judicial checks against Dutton’s control over immigrants, the other two being Federal and High Courts.

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Here’s why the changes are a horrible, horrible idea. And Christ, Labor, I really hope you’re listening for once.

What’s Being Proposed?

The reforms are explicitly designed to make it harder to become an Australian citizen. They include expanding the waiting period that permanent residents have to go through before they can become Australian citizens from one to four years; much tougher English language testing (which, according to the Australian Human Rights Commission, could see anywhere between 30-40,000 migrants miss the cut); and Dutton’s shiny new powers over the AAT, which has overturned almost two-fifths of his decisions to date.

“Judicial processes are very important,” Dutton has very graciously said. “[The changes] still allow people to have their day in court. But it doesn’t give rise to the silly situations which we’re seeing at the moment [from the AAT].”

Basically, in the same way that he can overrule the tribunal’s decision concerning visas, Dutton would now be able to overturn citizen applications that he, our moral paragon, does not personally believe are in the national interest.

Experts Are Not Very Keen On This

The legal community has opposed these changes from the get-go, with leading legal and human rights officials arguing Dutton’s powers already undermine the judiciary and adversely affect asylum seekers. Specifically, they’ve pointed to his recent decision to move application timeframes from one year to 60 days,  for no apparent reason other than to clog the system and stress people the hell out.

Notably, former Fraser-era immigration minister Ian Macphee bemoaned the fact that the law as it stands was “unjust [and] un-Australian”. “Ministers now exercise power that is mostly beyond the review of judges,” he said. “Such power should be exercised humanely and in accordance with morality, not absolute law.”

He went on to slam any proposed increase in Dutton’s executive authority.

The proposed new citizenship powers have been similarly rejected by legal practitioners, with multiple experts describing the breach of judicial powers as “draconian”.

“It opens the can of worms to the abrogation of other fundamental rights,” Western Sydney University law lecturer Jason Donnelly said. “The courts have a fundamental role in protecting rights – because the government certainly isn’t doing it.”

Refugee lawyer Julian Burnside flat out claimed that Dutton — a man famous for dishonesty, racist dogwhisling, embarrassing public mistakes, and inflammatory comments about refugees — should be the last person exercising these powers.

What is shocking is that, in a marked departure from regular processes, the government is refusing to release public feedback on these citizenship changes. This can only mean people loved the reforms and the new rules are great and not jingoistic garbage at all, no sireee.

The government conducted consultation on “Australian values” and a new pledge of allegiance over the course of six weeks, wrapping up on June 1, and has since decided not to release the results citing privacy concerns despite the fact several organisations told Fairfax they had no such concerns.

In response, some human rights and migration groups have simply published their submissions online, and they are not stoked about all this ministerial overreach.

These include the Australian Human Rights Commission, Refugee Council of Australia, Federation of Ethnic Communities Councils and the Liverpool Migrant Resource Centre, which, in varying degrees of diplomacy, are all scathing of the changes.

Will The Changes Get Through Parliament?

The Greens have also voiced opposition to the changes, with immigration spokesman Nick McKim describing the changes as a xenophobic and unfair. He labelled it a “draconian measure aimed at undermining multicultural Australia.”

“Time and again we have seen Peter Dutton grabbing more power for himself, as he tries to make himself judge, jury and jailor,” McKim said. “He has repeatedly shown he cannot follow the current laws – now he wants to get rid of the right of the courts to correct his unlawful decision.”

Labor have stood by and waved through plenty of terrible laws in this area — including legislation that outlawed people working in detention centres from whistleblowing — but Labor citizenship spokesperson Tony Burke has at least expressed criticism of the lack of data proving a requirement for the changes.

But even if Labor ends up opposing the changes, they could still pass parliament with the support of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and assorted other crossbenchers.

So there you go: the future of Australia’s citizenship and immigration framework is in the hands of a party that wants an outright ban on Muslims. Awesome.