You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker every morning to hear the latest episode. Just say play the news from the Australian. From the Australian, here's what's on the Front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Thursday, June thirteenth. The Greens and pro Climate Senate crossbenches are vowing to block any attempt by a future coalition government to weaken Australia's emissions reduction targets. That's after Peter Dutton said he'd
slow down Australia's energy transition in the short term. Police involved in the flawed initial investigation into the disappearance of mother of two Bromwin Winfield put surveillance on a clairvoyant, but not on her estranged husband. A local fortune teller and tarot card reader, was the only person regarded with suspicion by investigators immediately after Bromwin vanished in nineteen ninety three. That's the new revelation in episode five of our podcast Bronwyn,
available now at Bronwyn podcast dot com. Immigration Minister Andrew Giles has fought all the way to the Federal Court to prevent a Chinese born young woman becoming an Australian citizen today why the minister at the center of a scandal about allowing criminals to stay in Australia says this young woman is not entitled to citizenship. N G Sue was born in China in two thousand and one, the
daughter of a fifteen year old mother. After a long and difficult labour ending in an emergency cesarean, the baby was abandoned by her mum. Angie was born with significant brain hemorrhaging and she was diagnosed as having suffered brain damage because of a lack of oxygen during delivery. She had three lumps on her head and was suffering seizures. Shortly after birth, an Australian woman happened to be working
in the village and heard about the baby's situation. Alexandra Jagleman was working as medical director of a local charity running a clinic for pregnant women and children. She had met the baby's mother a few months earlier, conducting a pre natal check about halfway through her pregnancy. Here's how Alexandra Jagleman described what happened next. We've used a voice actor to bring you her words from a statement to court.
The doctors at the hospital told the birth parents that the baby would not be normal and would never speak. My colleague was contacted and was asked by the birth family if I, as the medical director for the NGO whom they'd met at the village clinic, could confirm that the baby had problems so that they could decapitate it.
The baby's community are Lahu, a hill tribe living mainly in Yunnan Province in China's southeast, close to the border with Thailand. They practice a faith called animism, a belief that spirituality is in all of nature, that plants and animals have souls. One of their beliefs, according to Jaglemen,
was that children with disabilities were cursed. Jagleman was standing in a street with her three children walking home from work when her colleague told her the birth family had asked if she could assess the baby.
I immediately agreed to help. However, I told him it can be very difficult to know the extent of brain damage in a newborn, and if I do find there are any signs of brain damage, I would not allow them to.
Get kill the baby.
I would take the baby, no matter the problem. Upon hearing the threat to the baby's life. I immediately decided I would raise her as my own daughter, no matter the disabilities, in order to save her life.
She arrived at the hospital and saw the baby's desperate situation. She was having constant seizures and had not been fed since birth. I spoke with the birth parents and confirmed what the pediatrician had said that it was very likely that the baby had some brain damage, although it was impossible to say what the extent would be. The birth parents immediately turned around and walked out of the hospital.
The pediatrician asked if I would take responsibility for the baby. I said yes, I'll raise the baby and be her mother. I told her I'd pay for all the medical expenses, including the emergency cesarean section for the birth mother and all medical expenses. I then asked for a bottle of milk formula and proceeded to sit on the hospital bed and successfully fed her despite her abnormal reflexes. I gave her the name Hope.
To her word, Alexandra J. Goleman became the baby's mother, giving the child her first bottle. Baby Angie had a remarkable recovery.
To say, things looked bleak early in Angie's life is certainly an understatement.
Paul Garvey is the Australian's West Australia Bureau chief.
So after that start, here we are more than twenty years later, and Angie, he also goes by the name of Hope, is a thriving, virbrant young woman, no lingering ill effects from those horrific brain injuries sustained during her birth. In many different senses, a miraculous story here. She's alive and well. The only issue is her citizenship.
He's spent months recently deeply reporting some of the curliest cases that come before Australia's courts and tribunals relating to immigration, visas and citizenship.
It's quite startling. So I have been living and breathing various court decisions in this immigration space now for the past few weeks. I've literally been reading these decisions in my sleep. I have dreams where I'm reading more direction A nine decisions. And then to come across this Federal Court decision finding that this girl born in these incredibly difficult circumstances, taken in, supported and raised by this for all intents and purposes, is this wonderful woman who's dedicated
her life to helping these disadvantaged people. To see that's then challenged by the government, by the Immigration Minister, to have her citizenship opposed in this sort of way really is quite jarring when you see the extents that have been taken from a legislative perspective to make it less likely for convicted criminals to be deported through Direction A nine.
To then see the same minister who introduced those easier set of conditions for those convicted criminals to then turn around and challenge and fights the citizenship for this young woman who has been raised in this Australian family life. It's quite disturbing to see.
In twenty twenty three the Federal government declined n GSU's application for citizenship.
So this falls to a question of law.
Around when someone is entitled to claim Australian citizenship by descent. So under the law, if your parent at the time of your birth is an Australian citizen, then you basically will receive Australian citizenship. This case is a lot more complicated than that though, because at the very moment when this child came out of the womb and was born her biological parents, this fifteen year old girl and her partner.
They were not Australian citizens. Now, Alexander Jagelman, she was certainly an Australian, but at that precise moment when this child was born, she was not that child's mother.
So what the.
Lawyers have been fighting over in the Ministry of Appeals Tribunal and then the Federal Court is at what point those definitions of a child being born actually take effect. If it is that simple moment of leaving the worm, or if it's something more complex and nuanced, which is what the AAT found that the moment that this child was known to have a brain injury was effectively the point at which Jagleman became her mother. So that's the legal point that this case hinges on.
She went to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal and argued Alexandra Jagleman was her mother, that because she'd been involved in the pregnancy and had given the baby her first food, she was the equivalent of a biological parent, and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal agreed, and.
The Federal Court came in with a much stricter interpretation on that overturned the AAT decision and found that at the point of birth. This child's parents were indeed the biological parents who were not Australian citizens.
Yep. The Minister, Andrew Giles, appealed the tribunal's decision to the Federal Court of Australia. Here's what the Minister's lawyers argued on behalf of the Commonwealth. They're being read by a voice actor.
The Tribunal ought to have construed the phrase at the time of the birth as meeting the precise moment in time on the particular day that a child is born, and the facts, as found by the Tribunal fell necessarily outside the description of at the time of Miss Sue's birth.
Enji's lawyers said at the time of birth that phrase could apply to the first few days of a baby's life. In a judgment handed down on June five, the justices throughout the Aat's ruling and held up the decision made by Giles to refuse Enji's citizenship. In their judgment, they wrote, the time of birth of a child is not a period of indefinite duration.
In its ordinary meaning, the phrase denotes the point in time from which a baby exists or starts life outside of his or her birth mother's body.
They said the phrase at the time of birth wasn't applied correctly by the AAT, and therefore its finding couldn't stand.
Although Miss Jagleman has undertaken a prenatal check of Miss Sue's biological mother when she was five months pregnant, Miss Jagleman did not, at the time of that check, or any time prior to being informed of Miss Sue's birth, acknowledge, represent or assume any parental responsibilities for Miss Sue.
They also offered a heartfelt acknowledgment of Jagleman's gesture.
The application of that narrow time requirement to the facts of the present case is heartbreaking. Miss Jagleman's dedication and devotion to her daughter is unquestionable. However, the pathways to Australian citizenship chosen by Parliament are circumscribed by arbitrary lines. The fairness of those lines reflect the legislative policy choices made by Parliament.
Coming up. Y Nji's older brothers, born in remarkably similar circumstances, got a very different result. Paul Garvey's reporting on this issue has been truly breathtaking. He's been combing through dense judgments and talking to everyone about the complex nature of Australia's immigration decisions. Our subscribers have been with him every step of the way, and you can join us at the Australian dot com dot au. We'll be back after
this break. Before Enji's birth, Jagleman had brought into her family two other young people born with medical conditions.
So the first of these boys a boy and named and Lee. He was born in a hospital in nineteen ninety eight. He too was abandoned by his biological parents at birth. He was born with a cleft lip in a cleft palate, and the Akha ethnic minority parents again saw those conditions as a sign that the child was cursed. Miss Jagleman was working in the hospital at the time.
She observed that this baby was just being left and neglected and the hospital wasn't being fed, and after three days she went to the director of the hospital and offered to raise the boy as her own child. So she's been raising en Lee ever since. Now. Eighteen months later, she gets a call from a pediatrician at the hospital telling her that another newborn baby has just been abandoned by his biological parents, again because of a cleft lip. And cleft palate, and asking her if she could take
that baby. She gets to the hospital the next day and is surprised to find that the biological parents are there in the hospital with this child. Miss Jagleman says to them, look, I'm not going to take your baby. She shows how to feed this baby with a special cleft palette bottle and promises that when the baby is five months old, she will organize the free surgery to correct the cleft palate. She gets home the following day and the shopkeeper next door gives her a box which
has been left for her. She opens the box and inside is the baby, the bottle, his birth certificate, and a note asking her to raise this child. She's subsequently found out that the parents had confided to the hospital that if they took the baby home, their relatives would see the baby as cursed and would have killed the baby. Both these boys similar stories to that of Ng. Those two boys had their cases go before the Administrative Appeals
Tribunal in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, respectively. Both made similar arguments to what we saw with Enng last year. Both received favorite rule outcomes from the tribunal and neither boy had their outcome challenge by the Immigration Minister of the time. This is different in that we've had a
similar decision similar circumstances. Yet Andrew Dalds, as the Minister, has used his authority to fight this decision and take it to the Federal Court, which has sided with him in his department in this case.
Since Enji's older brothers were granted citizenship, the full Court of the Federal Court made a new decision clarifying how the question of time of birth should be interpreted and that's what led the court to its decision in Enji's case. The Minister gave The Australian a statement on Wednesday evening saying simply, Enji's case was about time of birth and that's what guided the court's decision. Paul Garvey is The
Australian's West Australian Viewer Chief. Chris Dawson finds out on Thursday if his appeal against his murder conviction has been successful. Come back to the front to find out what happens to the teacher's pet case. After yet another twist