[Applause]
[Music]
when I returned to Australia in 2003
after a wonderful six-month stint as a
Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown
University in Washington DC my family
and I was severely jet-lagged so by the
time we made it to dinner and then
two-year-old was sound asleep so my
husband over dinner turned to our
four-year-old and asked her how would
you describe your brother she stopped
and reflected and proclaimed he’s a very
happy boy who likes eating meat and he’s
an Australian well I was taken aback
how many four-year-olds would sink to
identify by their nationality but that
Fulbright experience benefited all of us
she was at an early age able to
recognize from her preschool experience
that in some ways she was different
she was an Australian but that in so
many other ways she was the same there
was empathy and transformation
I was working then and have continued to
work on questions of citizenship and
globalization and this has become even
more pressing over the past few years
with concerns about terrorism my message
tonight is that the focus on security
and terrorism has distorted our
discussions on citizenship citizenship
is a device for inclusion it is a frame
for empathy
and transformation but instead over the
past few years leaders all around the
world have focused on citizenship as
exclusion which has led to a
vulnerability for dual citizens in
Australia I’m interested in this room
how many of you actually hold more than
one citizenship a significant number and
then if I move to ask how many of you
know other people who are dual citizens
in Australia
let’s now raise our hands of course we
all do we live in a multicultural
society and this is a good thing it’s
positive to be a dual citizen there are
so many benefits we can travel we can
connect to more than one country we can
also benefit Australia by enriching
Australia’s sense of itself in an
international world however over the
last couple of years our politicians and
representatives have used the device of
citizenship as a form of exclusion and
of concentrating on questions of
allegiance in being concerned about the
security of Australian citizens both
here and abroad in fact at the end of
2015 the government introduced an
amendment to the Australian citizenship
Act it is now the case that if you are a
dual citizen and you go overseas and
commit certain terrorist offences that
you will be subject to the loss of your
Australian citizenship even if you were
born in Australia now
don’t get me wrong I am not condoning
that activity in any sense but the real
question is is citizenship the correct
device for punishing those individuals
moreover does stripping them of their
citizenship
necessarily protect us anymore
indeed as individuals from Australia
travel overseas often how much more
protected are they if those individuals
are still out there without the
connection of the Australian government
to manage their activity but there is an
even more significant issue in my view
and that is that it is only dual
citizens who will be subject to the loss
of their citizenship if you look at the
person next to you and think one of you
is an sole Australian citizen and the
other is a dual citizen and the two of
you conduct exactly the same activity
overseas only the dual citizen will lose
their Australian citizenship now the
reason for this is because Australia
rightly in my view is a signatory to the
Convention on the reduction of
statelessness so the argument was
successfully put at the time of the
discussion of this new provision that we
could not strip sole Australian citizens
who conduct that activity overseas of
their citizenship because that would
leave them stateless and being stateless
of course is not a positive position to
be in but it reminds us of the
significance of the status of
citizenship so we have created an
environment where it is no longer secure
we are no longer secure as dual citizens
in the protection of that very
significant status so why this move and
concern about dual citizenship well in a
time of questions of allegiance there is
an easy Avenue for politicians to use
that device to proclaim a sense of
action and there are many people in
society who questioned your citizenship
if we go back to the family environment
we can think of the two different
responses to dual citizenship in the
following way if you think of
citizenship like marriage then the
notion of only having one partner one
citizenship makes sense however if you
think of citizenship more like
Parenthood we all know that we can have
more than one child without that
undermining our sense of commitment and
loyalty and concern for any of our
children so whilst our daughter on that
evening had the sole attention of her
parents she also had the security of
knowing that her brother would be awake
before too long to share that love and
attention and I believe that we should
be campaigning politicians and our
representatives to recognize that we
must think of dual citizenship like
Parenthood and to resist these moves
towards using citizenship as a device of
exclusion we should return to affirming
the multicultural nature of Australia
and resist the resistance to dual
citizenship
[Applause]
[Applause]
[Music]
when I returned to Australia in 2003
after a wonderful six-month stint as a
Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown
University in Washington DC my family
and I was severely jet-lagged so by the
time we made it to dinner and then
two-year-old was sound asleep so my
husband over dinner turned to our
four-year-old and asked her how would
you describe your brother she stopped
and reflected and proclaimed he’s a very
happy boy who likes eating meat and he’s
an Australian well I was taken aback
how many four-year-olds would sink to
identify by their nationality but that
Fulbright experience benefited all of us
she was at an early age able to
recognize from her preschool experience
that in some ways she was different
she was an Australian but that in so
many other ways she was the same there
was empathy and transformation
I was working then and have continued to
work on questions of citizenship and
globalization and this has become even
more pressing over the past few years
with concerns about terrorism my message
tonight is that the focus on security
and terrorism has distorted our
discussions on citizenship citizenship
is a device for inclusion it is a frame
for empathy
and transformation but instead over the
past few years leaders all around the
world have focused on citizenship as
exclusion which has led to a
vulnerability for dual citizens in
Australia I’m interested in this room
how many of you actually hold more than
one citizenship a significant number and
then if I move to ask how many of you
know other people who are dual citizens
in Australia
let’s now raise our hands of course we
all do we live in a multicultural
society and this is a good thing it’s
positive to be a dual citizen there are
so many benefits we can travel we can
connect to more than one country we can
also benefit Australia by enriching
Australia’s sense of itself in an
international world however over the
last couple of years our politicians and
representatives have used the device of
citizenship as a form of exclusion and
of concentrating on questions of
allegiance in being concerned about the
security of Australian citizens both
here and abroad in fact at the end of
2015 the government introduced an
amendment to the Australian citizenship
Act it is now the case that if you are a
dual citizen and you go overseas and
commit certain terrorist offences that
you will be subject to the loss of your
Australian citizenship even if you were
born in Australia now
don’t get me wrong I am not condoning
that activity in any sense but the real
question is is citizenship the correct
device for punishing those individuals
moreover does stripping them of their
citizenship
necessarily protect us anymore
indeed as individuals from Australia
travel overseas often how much more
protected are they if those individuals
are still out there without the
connection of the Australian government
to manage their activity but there is an
even more significant issue in my view
and that is that it is only dual
citizens who will be subject to the loss
of their citizenship if you look at the
person next to you and think one of you
is an sole Australian citizen and the
other is a dual citizen and the two of
you conduct exactly the same activity
overseas only the dual citizen will lose
their Australian citizenship now the
reason for this is because Australia
rightly in my view is a signatory to the
Convention on the reduction of
statelessness so the argument was
successfully put at the time of the
discussion of this new provision that we
could not strip sole Australian citizens
who conduct that activity overseas of
their citizenship because that would
leave them stateless and being stateless
of course is not a positive position to
be in but it reminds us of the
significance of the status of
citizenship so we have created an
environment where it is no longer secure
we are no longer secure as dual citizens
in the protection of that very
significant status so why this move and
concern about dual citizenship well in a
time of questions of allegiance there is
an easy Avenue for politicians to use
that device to proclaim a sense of
action and there are many people in
society who questioned your citizenship
if we go back to the family environment
we can think of the two different
responses to dual citizenship in the
following way if you think of
citizenship like marriage then the
notion of only having one partner one
citizenship makes sense however if you
think of citizenship more like
Parenthood we all know that we can have
more than one child without that
undermining our sense of commitment and
loyalty and concern for any of our
children so whilst our daughter on that
evening had the sole attention of her
parents she also had the security of
knowing that her brother would be awake
before too long to share that love and
attention and I believe that we should
be campaigning politicians and our
representatives to recognize that we
must think of dual citizenship like
Parenthood and to resist these moves
towards using citizenship as a device of
exclusion we should return to affirming
the multicultural nature of Australia
and resist the resistance to dual
citizenship
[Applause]
[Applause]
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