As a member of the Abbott cabinet, Malcolm Turnbull is obliged to keep any criticisms of the government's performance to himself. Unless, of course, it's in the confidentiality of the cabinet room itself.
"This is an extraordinary proposition," the Communications Minister said to the cabinet meeting on Monday night, according to people present in the room.
The Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, was proposing that he should have the power, at his own discretion, to strip an Australian of his or her citizenship. Even if it's the only citizenship they have. It was not for any random reason, however, but specifically for use on people suspected of terrorism-related offences.
Dutton enjoyed the vocal support of the Prime Minister. The meeting had no trouble accepting a related proposal, the idea that a dual citizen could be readily stripped of Australian citizenship. But someone with no other citizenship?
Turnbull objected: "A person's citizenship is of enormous importance, intrinsic to themselves. Take me. The only people who've lived in Australia longer than my family are Aboriginal. I have no other identity. Are we seriously saying some minister could take my citizenship?"
Only if you're a terrorist, was the rejoinder. "Only if you are someone the minister thinks is a terrorist," Turnbull corrected.
This was Barnaby Joyce's central objection too – the lack of hard proof, the lack of a trial, the absence of a jury, the lack of real rigour in a decision to take away a basic human right. "Isn't that what we have courts for?" Joyce posed. The deputy leader of the National Party went to the heart of the matter: "If you don't have enough evidence to charge them in a court, how can you have enough evidence to take away their citizenship?"
According to participants, Dutton replied: "That's the point, Barnaby. You don't need too much evidence. It's an administrative decision."
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If a person were eligible to apply for citizenship of another country, that would be protection enough, they argued in the cabinet meeting, even if the suspect didn't actually possess that other citizenship.
The idea was attractive to Dutton, to Abbott and to the Social Services Minister, Scott Morrison. If a terrorism suspect could be rendered stateless, it would mean two things. First, if that person were overseas, he or she could be denied the right to return to Australia. Second, if they were in Australia, they could be detained indefinitely.
