Political Memories and Migration by J. Olaf Kleist

Author:J. Olaf Kleist
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK, London

3.1 Australia Day and Citizenship Conventions: Civic Integration in the 1950s and 1960s

Australia introduced Australian citizenship on Australia Day 1949 after the federal parliament passed the Nationality and Citizenship Act 1948 in November that year. Arthur Calwell declared, according to Tasmania’s The Mercury, that this act rendered that year’s Australia Day to be of utmost importance ‘as it marked another step forward in the development of Australian nation-hood’. 16 Only, the Australian public and other newspapers did not appear to share the impression that Australian citizenship would make a significant impact upon their lives. Most papers buried the news of the introduction of citizenship in a brief note. 17 The tenor of the news stories was that it would not change anything for Australians except that now, in addition to being British subjects, Australians possessed an extra status. The Empire-loyal Sydney Morning Herald went as far as to mock the new law in an ironical comment on the front page: ‘Greetings, citizens of Australia! Or have you forgotten that to-day—by Act of Parliament—you become citizens of your own country, which is just what you were before.’ 18 In another comment, entitled ‘The Puzzle of Citizenship’, the paper called Australian citizenship ‘deplorable’ for weakening British subjecthood. It wondered about the status of Australian citizenship: ‘But just what that implies remains obscure.’ 19 Indeed, little changed for British subjects living in Australia, and in the years that followed few British immigrants felt compelled to take up Australian citizenship. The Nationality and Citizenship Act did not add any further rights to bearers of the new status. Instead, it only regulated the relationship between Australian citizens and other British subjects, and crucially, the act detailed the acquisition of Australian citizenship.

In the tradition of Australia’s constitution, the Nationality and Citizenship Act characterized belonging in relation to migrants and so-called ‘aliens’. 20 The introduction of the Act was only tenuously relevant to British subjects in Australia as they automatically received Australian citizenship and little seemed to have changed for them at first. For immigrants, Australian citizenship meant that requirements and procedures for naturalization were amended, as many newspapers informed their readers the day after the Act’s introduction. Citizenship also meant that immigrants’ relationship to their new society had changed. 21 Before 1949, Australian laws determined naturalization for the British Empire, indicating the schism of Australian belonging between democratic Australian legislation and British sovereignty. Since 1949, migrants who were naturalized in Australia joined a distinct society with jurisdiction over its own membership. In this regard, Australian citizenship was an opportunity for migrants to become part of the society to which they had migrated. To mark the occasion of receiving citizenship and joining Australian society as a special and impressive event, the Nationality and Citizenship Act also introduced mandatory naturalization ceremonies to be held in courts, and later in civic proceedings. Soon after the introduction of citizenship, non-British migrants received for the first time, as The Age announced, Australian citizenship in an ‘impressive’ naturalization ceremony. 22

Thus, Australia Day 1949 was a turning point for immigrants and subsequently for all Australians.

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