PETER VAN ONSELEN: Peter Dutton’s referendum plan isn’t as risky as the Voice – but it could still backfire

Peter Dutton is pressing ahead with a possible referendum on kicking out criminal dual citizens if he becomes Australia’s next leader.   

The Opposition Leader is planning to seek constitutional changes to permit a Coalition government to deport immigrants who spread hate, in response to the footage uploaded by Israeli influencer Max Veifer where two Bankstown nurses allegedly claimed they would kill Israeli patients who sought help at their hospital.

The pair have since been charged by police.

At issue is how serious hate crimes need to be to result in deportation. Currently dual citizens can only be stripped of their Australian nationality and deported if they commit terrorist acts resulting in a prison sentence of three or more years. But even that is now in question following a recent High Court ruling.

The issue took centre stage again on Tuesday when Dutton told Channel Seven’s Sunrise program: ‘My argument is if you betray your allegiance to our country… you should expect to lose your citizenship.’

The constitutional amendment, which requires a referendum, would be designed to bring certainty to what grounds the government has the right to expel dual citizens and revoke their Australian citizenship.

On Tuesday, the Sydney Morning Herald tried to claim ‘this masthead revealed Dutton was considering an election pledge on changing the Constitution to allow ministers to cancel the citizenship of people guilty of serious crimes’, despite the revelation being reported nearly a full month ago.

Last month Dutton told a conference in Adelaide ‘we have laws which allow the stripping of citizenship from people who commit terrorist attacks, but the High Court has limited the application’.

‘I think the Constitution is a barrier… if we need to amend the Constitution, then I think that’s a debate that our country is mature enough to have.’

The Albanese Government has dismissed the idea as ‘bizarre’, and Sunrise host Nat Barr questioned the Opposition Leader’s priorities by asking him: ‘Do you really want to send voters to another referendum poll?’

Anthony Albanese sought to amend the Constitution to impose an Indigenous Voice to Parliament as a central plank of his 2022 election campaign, only to see the referendum held a year after he won office be defeated in every state with a 61 percent national ‘No’ vote.

The referendum failure sparked a collapse in Labor’s primary vote and the PM’s personal support plummeted.

The Government still trails the Coalition in the polls with the next election due in about six weeks’ time.

While Dutton’s proposal might be more popular than the Voice referendum turned out to be, it would certainly be divisive. And there is no guarantee he would secure a majority of votes in a majority of states, which is required to amend the Australian Constitution.

Plus, any such debate could become a distraction during an election campaign expected to centre around economic management and how best to address the cost of living crisis that has engulfed Labor’s first term.

Nevertheless, Dutton has reaffirmed his intention to press ahead.

 ‘What we’re proposing here is a discussion about whether we have adequate laws, whether the Constitution is restrictive and ultimately what I want to do is keep our country safe and community safe,’ he told Sunrise.

While the alleged anti-Semitic comments by the Bankstown nurses sparked this debate, at least one of them isn’t even a dual citizen.

Ahmed ‘Rashid’ Nadir, who featured in the video alongside Sarah Abu Lebdeh, is believed to only hold Australian citizenship after arriving in Australia as a refugee.

You can’t render an Australian citizen stateless by revoking their nationality if they don’t have anywhere else to go, even if they weren’t born here.

It is unclear how Dutton would seek to deal with such situations.