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PLPRU contributes to Senate deliberation of the Australian Citizenship and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2014

The PLPRU has made a submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee’s Inquiry into the Australian Citizenship and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2014. Alex Reilly wrote the submission and appeared before the Committee on Monday, 10 November. The Bill tightened the requirements for both automatic citizenship and citizenship by conferral. The Bill also broadened the circumstances in which citizenship could be revoked on the grounds of fraud, extending it to incidents that occurred prior to the citizenship application. The Bill also removed review rights from decisions made by the Minister on ‘public interest’ grounds and conferred a power on the Minister to set aside decisions if the Minister considered it to be in the ‘public interest’ to do so. The submission raised a number of concerns surrounding these changes. In relation to one change, removing automatic citizenship from persons born in Australia and spending their first ten years in Australia if they had been in Australia unlawfully for any of that time, the submission argued that the amendment might be unconstitutional.

The submission can be viewed on the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee website (click here).

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