A Greens councillor in Brisbane has been asked by the Assistant Immigration Minister why his powers to officiate at citizenship ceremonies should not be revoked following his comments that Australia was a "stolen land."
He also criticized the government over "bureaucracy in the Immigration process" and difficulties faced by migrants in getting family members into Australia.
Assistant Minister for Immigration Alex Hawke said councillor Sri’s comments at the ceremony During a Diwali Festival in October constituted “political expression” while he said the code for citizenship ceremonies stated they could not be used as a forum for political, partisan or religious expression, the Brisbane Times reported.
A "concerned attendee" who was “offended” reported the matter to the Immigration Department said councillor Sri identified himself as a Greens member rather than as a councillor, Minister Hawke wrote in his letter.
"Your suggestions that the Department/Australian government has implemented costly and complicated processes, which make it difficult to obtain citizenship and for people to bring family members to Australia, and that this is motivated by racism and xenophobia," Mr Hawke wrote.
But Cr Sri is standing by his comments.
“It’s important to recognize that citizenship ceremonies are inherently political. They are nationalist ceremonies about swearing your allegiance to a particular country. I think it’s ok to speak openly about Australia in such circumstances. It doesn’t have to be just all glowing praise. If there are problems in Australia, we need to talk about them,” he tells SBS Punjabi.
Cr Sri says he said Australia was a stolen land and the country had a history of genocide during the acknowledgement of the country.
“That’s not uncontroversial and I think most people would agree that that’s a fact... that’s what happened. To suggest that my comments were so controversial that I shouldn’t have said it in that context, I think it’s deeply problematic,” he tells SBS Punjabi.
“It shows that the federal government is in denial about Australia’s racist history and about the ongoing difficulties about our immigration system.”
But Cr Sri also maintains that most of the speech was about congratulating the new citizens and welcoming them to Australia. He says the difficulties with the immigration process and the bureaucracy in the department were “throwaway comments” towards the end of his speech.
“They weren’t the main substance of it,” he says.
He has written a “strong letter” in response to the Assistant Immigration Minister’s communication in this regard.
“I find it interesting how he [Alex Hawke] has straightaway jumped to remove my power rather than simply sending a polite letter and say ‘hey.. this is a problem and let’s have a chat about it,” he says.
