citizenship

This page considers the shape of Australian official registration regarding citizenship, in particular passports and the electoral rolls.

It covers -

• introduction
• passports
• naturalisation
• electoral rolls
• political registration
• pecuniary interests
• studies

The page supplements discussion elsewhere on this site regarding privacy, security and the Australia Card.

     introduction

Citizenship provides an individual with the status of a citizen: a full member of the civil community (and as such enjoying rights, privileges and obligations of a member of the body politic, including participation in elections and a passport).

Australian citizenship may be obtained by -

• birth in Australia (prior to 20 August 1988)
• birth in Australia on or after that date where at least one parent was a citizen or permanent resident
• adoption under the law of an Australian state or territory by an Australian citizen
• descent from an Australian citizen (in the case of a person born overseas)
• naturalisation

Rights enjoyed by citizens broadly include entitlement to -

• vote and stand for public office
• serve on juries
• an Australian passport, to Australian consular protection overseas and immunity from deportation
• leave Australia and return at any time without requiring a resident return visa
• register overseas born children as Australian citizens by descent
• seek employment in federal government agencies and the armed forces

The 2001 census indicated that of the 18 plus million people living in Australia at that time, approximately 16.56 million were citizens (of whom some 3.15 million were born overseas).

The salient legislation is the Australian Citizenship Act 1948 (ACA), reflecting the federal parliament's power under s 51(xix) of the Constitution to make laws with respect to naturalisation and aliens.

Citizenship may be renounced or withdrawn in some circumstances (eg through service in the armed forces of an enemy country or through a migration-related fraud).

There is no single register or database of Australian citizenship. In practice 'citizenship registers' include -

• the registers of births, adoptions, deaths, marriages highlighted in the preceding page of this note
• passport databases
• naturalisation databases
• electoral rolls

The latter are significant for participation in political processes. Members of parliament and some others contribute information to pecuniary interests registers.

Documents that are normally used as evidence of Australian citizenship include -

• a valid Australian passport
• an Australian birth certificate
• an Australian naturalisation certificate
• a certificate of Australian citizenship by descent

It is common when applying for a job, a scholarship or some form of licence to supply one of those documents. In practice, of course, the certificates are readily forged and may simply be indicators (ie the birth certificate signals that the individual was born in Australia but does not demonstrate that the person is currently an Australian citizen).

     passports

The Passports Act 1938, discussed in more detail in a separate note elsewhere on this site, covers issue and use of Australian passports.

It has resulted in a national database of those people who carry/have applied for an Australian passport. Data is shared by Australian and overseas government agencies.

The passports database is complemented by a range of travel databases. International carriers entering Australia from overseas for example must comply with obligations under the Migration Act 1958 and Migration Regulations 1994 regarding the identification of each aircraft/vessel and all persons on board. That data feeds the Advance Passenger Processing (APP) system, accessed by Australian and overseas agencies, and migration databases.

     naturalisation

Since 1 December 1973 all migrants have to satisfy common criteria for naturalisation as an Australian citizen (preferential treatment for British subjects was ended by the Australian Citizenship Act 1973). Revised criteria since 1984 are broadly that applicants -

• intend to reside in Australia (or maintain a "close and continuing association" with Australia)
• hold permanent resident status
• have present in Australia as a permanent resident for a total of two years in the five years prior to application, including a total of 12 months in the preceding two years
• understand the "responsibilities and privileges" of Australian citizenship
• are able to speak and understand basic English
• understand the nature of the application

All applicants aged 16 or over must attend a citizenship ceremony and make a formal Pledge of Commitment.

Naturalisation is formally registered, with the Department of Immigration & Multicultural Affairs (DIMA) and its predecessors maintaining a Citizenship Register from 1904 onwards.

Documentation for each applicant generally includes a naturalisation certificate and case file, with the latter featuring the application for citizenship, oath of allegiance and other correspondence. It encompasses information on the applicant's occupation, marital status, place and date of birth, a physical description, parents' names, nationality and travel outside Australia.

     electoral rolls

Official registration of eligible voters forms the basis of electoral rolls maintained by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and state agencies.

Enrolment is compulsory for Commonwealth purposes for Australian citizens who are 18 years of age or over and who have lived at their current address for at least one month. Since 1925 federal electoral enrolment has been compulsory for all Australian citizens over the statutory voting age.

The states and territories have joint roll agreements with the AEC: electors need complete only one form to enrol for federal, state/territory and local government elections.

The electoral rolls provide a 'weak identifier' that features name, date of birth and address rather than a unique identification number. That weakness is of course reduced when the information is combined with one or more public/private data sets such as HIC records, ATO records and commercial reference service databases.

Australian Electoral Law: A Stocktake (PDF) by Graeme Orr, Bryan Mercurio & George Williams commented in 2003 that

The incidence of fraudulent enrolment, multiple voting, 'cemetery voting' (i.e., people voting in the names of dead electors whose names are yet to be cleansed from the roll) and impersonation is a matter for conjecture. Convictions for multiple voting are almost non-existent. But this may be because it is almost impossible to find evidence to contradict an elector whose name was marked off at different polling booths, but who denies voting twice. (The possibilities of administrative error or anonymous personation cast too much doubt on prosecution in such cases.)

There is a more extensive discussion in Limiting Democracy: The Erosion of Electoral Rights in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press 2006) by Colin Hughes & Brian Costar, the Australian National Audit Office report on Integrity of the Electoral Roll and 2001 User friendly, not abuser friendly report by the national parliament's Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters (JSCEM).

Federal agencies with special access to the electoral roll under the Electoral & Referendum Regulations 1940 include the Defence Department, Department of Employment & Workplace Relations, Australia Post, Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, Australian Crime Commission, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation, Centrelink and Director of Public Prosecutions.

     political registration

The Australian electoral regimes do not require ordinary citizens to specify affiliation with a particular political party. Most people are not members of political parties and there are anecdotal indications that members of parties have, on occasion, voted for candidates of other parties.

However, the process for registration of a political party (the prerequisite for a candidate to be identified on the ballot paper as a party's representative rather than an independent) requires that the Electoral Commission be provided with a list of at least 500 members for each party. That requirement has been unsuccessfully challenged in the High Court.

The list held by the Electoral Commission is not published by that organisation.

     pecuniary interests

Pecuniary interest registers (ie formal disclosure of the assets - and thus potential conflicts of interest - of legislators, advisers and senior officials) in Australia can be traced to report of the federal parliament's Joint Committee on Pecuniary Interests of Members of Parliament.

Declaration of interests - with varying degrees of public exposure - has spread from the national parliament to state/territory legislatures, some local government councils, ministerial offices and senior bureaucrats. Disclosure is generally underpinned by sanctions for breaches of the registration requirements.

At the federal level a confidential register of Ministers' interests has been maintained by successive Prime Ministers since 1978. It was extended to all members of the House of Representatives (but not the Senate) in 1984.

Federal MPs are required to disclose shareholdings, directorships, family and business trusts, real estate, assets over $5000, liabilities, substantial sources of income, gifts over a specified value and memberships of organisations.

Members may make discretionary disclosures (in relation to any direct or indirect benefits, advantages or liabilities that are not required to be disclosed) if the MP considers the interest may constitute a conflict of between the individual's personal interests and duties as a legislator.

State/territory legislatures typically require that members of parliament, including Ministers, to make a declaration of their pecuniary interests within one month of making and subscribing an oath or affirmation as a Member. In NSW for example that requirement is articulated in the Constitution (Disclosures by Members) Regulation 1983.

The level of disclosure varies between the jurisdictions, with Victoria for example only requiring identification of any enterprise in which the MP held an office or a beneficial interest exceeding $500 whereas the Queensland regime requires detailed information and differentiates between ordinary shareholdings, controlling interests and stakes in holding companies.

Those declarations form a Public Register of Members' Interests, generally maintained by an officer of the parliament and oversighted by a parliamentary committee. A statement of the interests of related persons is often maintained in a private register by the Parliament. Each MP, including Ministers, must formally notify any change in the details contained in the last statement of interests within one month of becoming aware of the change or, where there are no changes a 'no change' of interests return no later that 30 June each year.

Staff employed within Ministerial Offices are required to ensure that their private interests do not conflict with, or are not seen to be in conflict with, the discharge of their official duties. They are accordingly required to lodge a statement of pecuniary interests with their relevant Minister on an annual basis no later than 30 June each year. The 'Statement of Pecuniary Interests' provides details of the officer's interests together with the interests (as known to the officer) of the officer's partner and any dependants.

The legal basis for registers in the main jurisdictions is -

• federal Parliament - House of Representatives Resolution (9 October 1984) and Special Order of the Senate (17 March 1994)
• Australian Capital Territory - Resolution of the House 7 April 1992
• New South Wales - Constitution (Disclosures by Members) Regulation 1983
• Northern Territory - Legislative Assembly (Register of Members' Interests) Act 1992
• Queensland - Resolution of the House (25 May 1999)
• South Australia - Members of Parliament (Register of Interests) Act 1983
• Tasmania - Parliamentary (Disclosure of Interests) Act 1996
• Victoria - Members of Parliament (Register of Interests) Act
  1978
• Western Australia - Members of Parliament (Financial Interests) Act 1992

Questions about lobbying and pecuniary interest registers are discussed in more detail in the advocacy note elsewhere on this site.

     studies

Pointers to works on the shape of citizenship in Australia and other societies are here and here.

They include John Torpey's The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship & the State (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000), Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices since the French Revolution (Princeton: Princeton Uni Press 2001) co-edited by Torpey & Jane Caplan, From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) by Alastair Davidson, Citizens without Rights: Aborigines & Australian Citizenship (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1997) by John Chesterman & Brian Galligan and Redefining Australians: Immigration, Citizenship & National Identity (Marrickville: Hale & Iremonger 1995) by Ann-Mari Jordens.

For electoral registration see User Friendly, Not Abuser Friendly: Report of the Inquiry into the Integrity of the Electoral Roll (2001, here) by the federal parliament Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, Integrity of the Electoral Roll, Audit Report No 42 (2001-02) by the Australian National Audit Office and The Integrity of the Electoral Roll: Review of ANAO Report No 42 2001-02 (here) by the parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters.

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