Perth Voice Interactive

PROPOSED new laws could see people who don’t even know they’re dual citizens stripped of their Australian citizenship, Perth federal Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan says.

While most media attention has been on foreign-born Australians who retain citizenship of countries such as Syria and Afghanistan, Ms MacTiernan notes Australian-born citizens can all too easily be caught in the net.

“You’ve got people like me who had no idea they were dual citizens,” she says. “My father was born in Ireland, I never knew I had Irish citizenship.”

Only when filling out forms to enter federal parliament was the Australian-born politician’s dual citizenship discovered.

Legal authority

The Abbott government’s Allegiance to Australia bill will give the immigration minister—currently Peter Dutton—the legal authority to strip citizenship from any dual national suspected of fighting for terrorist organisations, financing terrorism, directing activities for terrorism or engaging in recruitment.

No conviction is necessary—the minister can make his decision based solely on secret advice from intelligence agencies.

Ms MacTiernan says the law is dangerous because the notion of terrorism can change: less than 30 years ago Margaret Thatcher labelled Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress a terrorist organisation making Mandela, by association, a terrorist. In the early 1960s then-FBI director J Edgar Hoover branded Martin Luther King Jr “the most dangerous” African-American leader in the US.

Under the proposed law, Ms MacTiernan could have had her Australian citizenship revoked and been deported from the country of her birth to Ireland, where she’s never lived, for an act as simple as donating to a humanitarian organisation that was later discovered to have links with militia or insurgents.

“This is not just confined to ISIS… people supporting freedom fighters against a terrible dictatorship, they could be caught up in this,” she notes.

“I think it’s appalling… what I see as a massive over-extension is people who are not fighting overseas, who may never have left Australia, and who have never been charged with anything or found guilty by the courts, can find themselves having lost their citizenships.”

In the Perth electorate about 61 per cent have either one or both parents born overseas: the national average is about 43 per cent.

Ms MacTiernan’s holding a forum on Australian citizenship, what it means and who should decide when it’s removed at the North Perth Bowling Club, 10 Farmer Street on July 19. RSVP 9272 3411.

by DAVID BELL