New powers for Scott Morrison
AIMN reader Susan Argall alerts us to yet another attack on our rights that should have us all extremely concerned.
The following is a post from November 7 from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC)
#BREAKING. Scott Morrison has introduced another new draconian Bill
called “Australian Citizenship and Other Legislation Amendment Bill
2014″. It gives him the unreviewable power to cancel the citizenship of
any Australian without any criminal conviction at all. Think about that.
Being able to lose your Citizenship despite not having been found
guilty of a criminal offence. (P.S This is not just for refugees but
EVERYONE not born in Australia). Just 6 days was given for the public to
make submissions (closed yesterday). Good news is we made a submission
& will be appearing before the committee reviewing it on Monday, to
fight the good fight to stop it!
This is an excerpt from the second reading of the Bill by Paul Fletcher on October 23.
“On occasion, the minister makes personal decisions under the act.
The bill makes it clear that the minister can specify that such a
decision is made in the public interest. As it is not appropriate for
merits review to be available in respect of decisions that have been
made by the minister personally the bill protects them from merits
review. Judicial review will remain available.
The bill also provides the minister with a power to personally set
aside certain decisions of the AAT if it is in the public interest to do
so. The Minister for Immigration and Border Protection is concerned
that some decisions made by the AAT have led to outcomes that are
outside the community standards that citizenship policy is intended to
meet, including recent occasions where the AAT found that people were of
good character despite having been convicted of child sexual offences,
manslaughter, people smuggling or domestic violence.
These amendments to protect the minister’s personal decisions from
merits review and to allow the minister to set aside decisions of the
AAT in certain circumstances will bring the minister’s powers under the
Citizenship Act in line with similar powers under the Migration Act.
The bill also provides the minister with a power to make legislative instruments.”
As Susan points out, “This is causing an enormous amount of fear and
polarising the community. Idiots are posting that we should be trusting
of our government’s intentions, that it is a good thing to behave to
prevent certain communities from damaging Australia. This is further
frightening all those that were not born here.”
Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states
(1) Everyone has the right to a nationality
(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality
which brings into question the legality of these new powers.
One by one, the Ministers of this government are changing the laws to
give themselves personal power bypassing review – Scott Morrison,
George Brandis, Greg Hunt – all are winding back our rights and removing
avenues to have their decisions reviewed.
This is NOT democracy.
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