Topics: Government’s new measures to strengthen Australian citizenship; stronger counter-terrorism arrangements.
E&OE…
RAF EPSTEIN
And another mean guitar player, Senator Scott Ryan, he is a Liberal Senator for the State of Victoria. He is, of course part of Tony Abbott’s Federal Coalition Government; he is as well the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education when he is not tinkling with the guitar. Scott Ryan, good afternoon.
SENATOR RYAN
I wish I could play the guitar Raf.
EPSTEIN
Are you a Carlton supporter?
RYAN
No, I grew up in Essendon. Essendon supporters always take a bit of joy in Carlton’s misery but it is obviously a sad day for Mick Malthouse given his contribution to the game.
EPSTEIN
Now talk me through why the Government wants to allow a Minister to determine a penalty as heavy as stripping someone of their citizenship.
RYAN
Let’s put this in context, a number of countries around the world have strengthened their laws around citizenship because the nature of the threat we face now which we tragically read about every day, even today with that tragic case outlined in one of the papers of the mother from Sydney going overseas. We have people who have left our country who have gone overseas to join a horrific regime that is committing crimes against humanity. Sadly there are some of those people who have sought to return both to our nation and other nations that pose a real threat. We have updated the laws on going overseas to fight to make clear that legal technicalities can’t actually prevent the charging of someone with, what should be and is quite rightly a great offence. The power of the Minister to strip citizenship of dual citizens – and I should make the important point that it is subject to judicial review so there is an opportunity there for it to be reviewed, and it is only to be used in very grave circumstances. But we do need to make it clear that certain behaviour is not acceptable from those who wish to enjoy the privileges of Australian citizenship; it can also be used to prevent someone from returning home where they may actually be quite a serious risk to our own safety.
EPSTEIN
Are you comfortable that there is no court involvement in that decision, it’s up essentially to public servants and advisers to the Minister?
RYAN
I don’t think any person who holds ministerial office takes these responsibilities anything other than very, very seriously. I am confident that they are there, I am also confident that it is subject to judicial review. That does ensure that there is a check and balance there.
EPSTEIN
Is there not a danger that, well I suppose that there is always a danger and that is why the Government has to make a balanced decision about it, but that people who go through with this feel insignificant, they feel ignored and they feel marginalised, they go over to a place like Syria to make themselves feel worthy and important, by implying such a heavy sanction don’t we give them the very legitimacy and substance that they crave? Which is precisely what we don’t want to give them?
RYAN
Well, there is no simple explanation for why people do this. That is one particularly charitable explanation; there are others people that go over there with the full knowledge that they are going to commit pretty grave abuses of human rights to their fellow human beings.
EPSTEIN
You could have both concepts in mind.
RYAN
I think you could, I think we have also got to take into account here that we don’t just want these people coming home, they do pose a real risk, they do require substantial resources to monitor and we do have to protect the interests of those living in Australia. I am less concerned about someone’s personal self-esteem if they get their citizenship stripped, whether that makes them feel better or worse, than I am about firstly protecting Australian citizens. But also saying that there are some elements of being an Australian citizen that if you do cross the line that there are going to be substantial penalties.
EPSTEIN
Don’t we need to make it a crime? I suppose what I mean by giving them legitimacy, if you make this a crime you say listen, there’s a significant criminal penalty that attaches to going over to Syria and fighting with IS. If you come back, we’ll lock you up. Whereas if you just strip their citizenship and stop them from coming back in (A), aren’t you making it another country’s problem? And (B) aren’t you again giving them the legitimacy that they crave?
RYAN
Well, I think that you can do both in the sense that the Prime Minister made it clear both last week and today, that people who expect to come home to Australia after having served in these horrific roles are going to face the full force of the law. This is part of a suite of measures; it’s not always practical to say that we’ll wait for the person to turn up at Sydney or Melbourne airport after connecting on a flight through Singapore or Dubai, and then we’ll arrest them. This can be about making a statement that this person is no longer welcome as an Australian citizen. We as a nation repudiate this person, their actions and who they associate with. I think that’s also part of leading, making it clear that this sort of behaviour, this sort of attitude is not acceptable. Australia doesn’t tolerate it. We quite rightly stomp on people who preach intolerance at home, and if people are going to go overseas and not just preach it but live it, then I think that this is an important part of the suite of measures that the Government will have available.
EPSTEIN
1300 222 774; I’d love to know what you make of the Government’s plan to strip citizenship of those who go overseas to fight with IS. It’ll only happen to those that hold the passport of another country. What do you think? 1300 222 774. Scott Ryan is a Liberal Party Senator from Victoria; he’s the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister’s Minister for Education. Scott Ryan, both Fairfax and the ABC are reporting that Cabinet considered stripping from those who only have one passport, so that’s people who were born here or don’t have any way of being a citizen of another country. There was clearly a Cabinet split around that issue. I know you’re not in on that discussion, but do you personally support if someone’s born here, and they don’t have say the ability to get a passport I another country, are you comfortable making someone stateless? Because clearly some in Cabinet thought that was an idea worth considering.
RYAN
Well, firstly Raf can I say that we expect or politicians to be able to frankly and freely debate things. So, that can be portrayed as a discussion in Cabinet, a frank discussion, and that’s exactly what I want my Cabinet, no matter what side of politics is in, to be able to have; a full and frank discussion. To portray it as a split is one of those elements that I think makes it hard to have frank debates in Australian politics. I wasn’t there, but I hope there was a frank Cabinet discussion and if those reports are accurate then there was. You don’t want automatons walking in with the same attitudes before the discussion.
EPSTEIN
Do you think that it’s a good idea?
RYAN
I think it’s worth considering, and we’ve indicated that there are laws in other places and some of my colleagues like Dan Tehan have written about them, that the UK has moved down this front where if someone is acting in a certain way, as long as you don’t breach the various international conventions to which we’ve signed up to, to render someone stateless, we can take this action against them and I think that’s something that’s still being explored.
EPSTEIN
So when you say that it’s worth being considered, there’s a danger isn’t there that you end up indefinitely jailing someone. Because if you take someone’s passport away from them, they’ve got nowhere to go, no country’s going to take them. They end up being in an immigration centre for ever, that’s a significant risk isn’t it?
RYAN
Well that is one of the various risks that we’ve looked at. As we made clear today, some of those issues are still being considered. We passed two tranches of national security legislation last year, criminalising in clearer terms being over in places such as Iraq and Syria and participating in these armies. So this will be an evolving challenge, and the law will evolve to deal with it because tragically there are people, a very, very small number who are in Australia, who get tempted by the spells that are cast over the internet to get people to go and join these cult, and we’ve got to protect Australians, but we also have a duty to stop Australians from going over and joining these particular horrific armies.
EPSTEIN
Scott Ryan, thanks for your time.
RYAN
Thanks, Raf.
(ENDS)