Australian Citizenship in the Twenty-First Century: Historical Perspectives

When Australia’s Federal Liberal Government introduced the idea of a citizenship test in September 2007, it was promoted, along with changes to citizenship legislation, as a modernising project. The 2005 Citizenship Bill would replace the old Nationality and Citizenship Act (1948: hereafter, NCA) bringing it ‘into line with the reality of modern Australia’. Their discussion paper on citizenship testing, Australian Citizenship: Much More Than A Ceremony, pushed this line still further suggesting that a test represented ‘new thinking’ and a ‘fresh approach to settlement and citizenship’. Yet, during the parliamentary debates which ensued several opposition politicians saw in the new apparitions of the old, including attitudes associated with the White Australia Policy. Such difference of view reflects what Judith Brett reminds us is the partisan nature of debate about citizenship in Australia (Brett, 2001). This had remained relatively contained over the preceding two decades. There had been broad bipartisan agreement about the need to reinvigorate the language of citizenship. However, the contemporary changes were radical. The reintroduction of a formal test, some 50 years after the abolition of the last, signalled the new use to which citizenship was being put. The Federal Government wanted to use citizenship to drive unity, insisting on it being the common bond at the heart of the nation.