Peter Dutton‘s extremely controversial citizenship reforms are officially dead in the water in their current form after they failed to pass the Senate.
You might remember news floating around their citizenship reforms over the past few months – basically, Dutts wanted a much tougher process for people to apply for Australian citizenship, including an four year wait for permanent residents and a more difficult English language test.
The bill also would have imposed a controversial test on “Australian values”.
Welp, not anymore. It’s mostly down to senators from the Nick Xenophon Team acting as a tiebreaker. The NXT has maintained that they cannot vote for the bill in its current form for months now. They had a lot of complaints about it, much of which centred around the power it handed to Dutton.
Labor, the Greens and the NXT all voted against the bill.
On Tuesday, Dutton conceded to his mates in the Coalition partyroom that it looked like the bill wasn’t going to get through in his current form, and said he was willing to concede on certain elements.
Well, it didn’t work – the bill’s failed. Greens senator Nick McKim hailed it as a victory.
“Today, the people of Australia have shown what we can achieve when we stand together,” McKim said today.
“People who are working, studying and raising families in Australia can now get on with their lives and make choices about their future, after they were so unfairly put on hold for months.”
It’s unknown whether Dutton and the Coalition will try moving any of the individual motions through Parliament in the future. For now though… sucked in.
