CQ Today – Tougher immigration and border controls needed for Australia

A few years ago, I found myself in the High Court as an alleged Italian. Like many Italians, my nonno and nonna emigrated to Australia after the Second World War. The High Court found that I was a dinky-di Aussie, so I could continue my service as a Senator for Queensland. But in the process, I learnt a lot more about my grandparents. I paid to have access to hundreds of files on them held by the National Archives. What shocked me about these documents was the lengths that my grandparents had to go to in the 1950s to become Australian citizens. They needed references from their employers and people of stature in the community, and letters from local police constables, and evidence that they had secure lodgings. The Inspector of Police in Townsville wrote about my nonno, Gaetano Zanella, “The applicant has a very good knowledge of the English language, and would experience no difficulty in working amongst and understanding English-speaking people … he fully understands the rights and privileges of Australian citizenship.” I am grateful that the Australian authorities agreed and allowed my nonno to become naturalised, but I am also grateful that a high standard was set and it was not simple to jump over it. Nothing like this due diligence is done today. Under Labor, we have taken in 1.3 million people in just three years. The previous record in three years was 815,000. There has not been anything like proper diligence done on this many people. Angus Taylor announced this week that an LNP Government would launch a crackdown and more stringently vet people who apply for visas and citizenship. We would vet people thoroughly before they come to Australia, including by investigating their social media use. If Australian authorities could do proper diligence in the 1950s, with the technology and AI we have today, we should run a tougher ruler over who is applying. We would require people to agree to Australian values (like free speech and freedom of religion) and oblige them to learn English. We would, for the first time, make Australian values a condition of entry, not just a form you agree to. This would allow authorities to deport people who do not comply with those values. We would deport the tens of thousands of people who remain in Australia illegally after overstaying their visas. We would fast-track this deportation process by establishing a “Safe Country List”. If you are from a safe country, you should go home. There are more than 25,000 people stuck in our court system claiming asylum from Pacific island nations, India, Vietnam and other Southeast Asian countries. These claims can take years to resolve, imposing costs on the Australian legal system. Most of all, these changes would restore integrity and trust in our borders. Labor has botched the reopening of our borders post-COVID. They have opened the floodgates, and the social and economic pressures this has unleashed are weakening our national unity. We need to restore the principle that John Howard established: “we decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.” It was a Liberal National Government that stopped the boats and the loss of life from illegal people smuggling. In fact, we did it twice, the second time after Kevin Rudd started the boats again. History has repeated itself, with Labor losing control of our borders again. Once again, we need a Liberal National Government that will be tough on border control, defend Australian values and won’t shy away from deporting people who are here illegally. We are a country that has been built by migrants like my grandparents. But we did that with a system of tough controls, an expectation that a new migrant would work and contribute to our nation, and a high hurdle to become an Australian. To keep our unified nation, we need to restore tougher border controls.