As I’ve written several times, Australia is far too generous in handing out citizenship to immigrants. Too often, it seems, Australia grants citizenship to people who regard it as a citizenship-of-convenience (Australia’s is the sixth-most powerful passport in the world), while actively hating Australia. This was shown most obviously in the hundreds of Muslims who renounced Australia for the ISIS ‘caliphate’, and the thousands more, including politicians, who clearly put their religious allegiance ahead of the nation that has welcomed them.
The disturbing sight of Labor’s Tony Burke conducting Maoist-style mass citizenship rallies in marginal seats, weeks ahead of a critical election, shows that some politicians also plainly regard Australian citizenship as a tawdry transaction.
It’s long past time that Australia got far more serious and restrictive in granting citizenship. Failing that, it must be made easier to strip it from those who, by their words and deeds, clearly do not deserve it.
Peter Dutton says people who “betray (their) allegiance to our country” should lose their citizenship, amid reports he is considering pledging a referendum to change the constitution to give the government powers to strip criminal dual nationals of their Australian citizenship and deport them.
“At the moment we’ve got people in our country who hate our country, who want to cause terrorist attacks,” he told Channel 7.
Worse, we’ve got non-citizens who’ve committed heinous crimes, including child abuse, rape and murder, whom we apparently have to let stay here. All thanks to activist judges on the High Court that apparently fancy themselves as ‘progressive’ policy makers.
Peter Dutton says he is proposing a “discussion … about whether the constitution is restrictive” about stripping criminal dual citizens of their Australian citizenship following a report the coalition was considering pledging a referendum to grant the government such a power.
“You can do as much as we can by legislation, but as they say you can’t outlegislate the constitution,” he told Channel 7.
Or, you shouldn’t give unelected, activist judges the least wriggle-room to impose their ‘progressive’ ideologies, free from the inconvenience of democracy.
“We would never grant somebody citizenship if we knew they were going to undertake a terrorist act and somebody who signs the pledge of allegiance to our country and then breaks it in such an overt way – or is involved in child paedophilia, for argument’s sake – I believe that the community standard demands that people who don’t abide by our laws and don’t respect fellow Australians who want to harm women and children – I just don’t think that they deserve priority.”
This naturally raises questions of whether a putative Dutton government is risking the sort of political blowback from a failed referendum that did so much damage to Anthony Albanese.
Mr Dutton distinguished this proposal and that of the indigenous voice to parliament, which the opposition often points to as wasted spending.
“With the voice, it was the wrong issue for the government to put to the people – it could have been dealt with by legislation,” Mr Dutton said.
“The prime minister wouldn’t explain the logic, the rationale and the impact of the voice and that’s why it went down.”
Yet again, though, Labor is taking the side of the criminals and extremists.
Jim Chalmers says Peter Dutton is mulling a referendum call on criminal dual nationals to “fix his mistakes” and sought to differentiate it from Labor’s “methodical … considered” approach.
He’s taking the piss, right? This is the same Labor who panicked and instantly turned loose hundreds of foreign-born rapists, paedophiles and murderers, without even the most basic parole requirements. The same Labor who’ve spent the past 18 months pandering to vile anti-Semitism, simply because they desperately need the votes of virulent Jew-haters.
The treasurer said the High Court’s Benbrika decision, which stopped government ministers from being able to strip a person’s citizenship, came after Mr Dutton “tried to impose these laws”.
Which only underscores the desperate need for a referendum to make the Constitution bulletproof and stop the activist judges from endangering law-abiding and peaceful Australians. Chalmers truly is a dangerous fool.
A natural fit for the Albanese government, in other words.
