And then this morning, as part of his weekly love in with Sydney radio station 2GB (a day early for Valentine’s Day, what a shame!) Peter Dutton then whirred up the citizenship debate again.

It was in the context of the Sydney nurses who have been stood down but it very quickly went to stripping people of Australian citizenship.

This is something Peter Dutton tried to do during the Malcolm Turnbull years, but lost that battle to then Attorney-general George Brandis, who despite his faults, is a student of law and was steadfast in how attempts to do what Dutton wanted were ILLEGAL.

A law was put in place for dual citizens. The high court had some things to say about that, so in 2023 Labor passed a new law that allowed for the people aged 14 or older to be stripped of citizenship “if the serious convictions “demonstrate that the person has repudiated their allegiance to Australia”. This includes cases of terrorism, espionage, advocating mutiny, foreign interference, and offences related to the use of explosives or lethal devices”.

Now Australia has just passed hate speech laws which make the line of what a ‘serious offence’ is very blurry. And Dutton is indicating he wants to see dual citizens stripped of their citizenship in cases like this. And he wants to make it an election issue:

As I say, I think it’s a conversation for our country at some point, maybe sooner than later, about how we can say to these people, ‘if you don’t share our values, if you’re here and you’re enjoying the welfare system and you’re enjoying free health and free education, then at the same time you hate our country, well, I don’t think you’ve got a place here’. So, I think there is a time for a public debate about the inadequacies of the system that we’ve got at the moment and how we can address it. “

We are on a very slippery slope here.