Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015

The Australian Citizenship Amendment (Allegiance to Australia) Bill 2015 (Bill) has been introduced and undergone its first reading today in the House of Representatives.

The Bill includes measures that:

• provide the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection with the power to revoke the citizenship of dual nationals
• allow individuals who have not been convicted of terrorist activities to lose their citizenship
• allow the intelligence services and Government to declare that it is not 'in the public interest' to release the information used to strip an individual of their citizenship
• not allow an individual a forum to dispute the information on which they have been stripped of their citizenship
• not provide merits review of the decision to revoke the citizenship
• allow judicial review only of a decision to revoke citizenship ie review of the judicial process not the facts or merits of the case.

The Prime Minister has also referred the Bill to the Joint Standing Committee on Intelligence and Security to consider whether the amendments can be enforced retrospectively.