Notice
Legislation Change In Citizenship from 1 July 2007 due to the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 and the Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Act 2007.
The Australian Citizenship Act 2007 replaces the Australian Citizenship Act 1948.
The purpose of the Act is to set out how a person may become an Australian citizen, how citizenship may be evidenced and how a person may cease to be a citizen.
In particular, the Act: (1) sets out the circumstances in which people automatically become Australian citizens and sets out the eligibility requirements for the acquisition of Australian citizenship by descent, adoption, conferral or resumption. (2) The Act changes the residence requirement for most citizenship applicants to 4 years lawful residence immediately before making an application, but it allows a permanent resident spouse or interdependent partner of an Australian citizen to have his or her residence outside Australia taken to be residence in Australia in certain circumstances. (3) It allows children who were born after a parent ceased being an Australian citizen upon acquiring the citizenship of another country to become Australian citizens. (4)
prohibits .citizenship to people assessed as being a risk to Australia's security or that have a history of felonious national security offences.(5) It prohibits conferral during periods in which a pending Commonwealth, State or Territory criminal offence exists. (6) It removes age limits for former Australian citizens to resume Australian citizenship provides for the collection, use, storage and destruction of personal identifiers. (7) It extends the provisions for revocation of Australian citizenship to include serious criminal offences committed before acquisition of citizenship, and third party fraud. (8) It provides the discretion to revoke a child's citizenship if the child's only Australian citizen responsible parent ceases to be an Australian citizen.There are other provisions.
Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Act 2007 was passed by Parliament along with the new Act and makes transitional arrangements and consequential amendments to various Acts which are necessary for the implementation of the new Act.
The Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Act 2007 provides various application and transitional provisions relating to the new Act including: deeming provisions, expanding the meaning of terms used in the Act and clarifying the application of the new Act
Technical details
The structure of the new Act is as follows:
Part 1 – Preliminary
Part 2 – Australian citizenship
Division 1 – Automatic acquisition of Australian citizenship
Division 2 – Acquisition of Australian citizenship by application
Subdivision A – Citizenship by descent
Subdivision AA – Citizenship for persons adopted in accordance with the Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption
Subdivision B – Citizenship by conferral
Subdivision C – Resuming citizenship
Division 3 – Cessation of Australian citizenship
Division 4 – Evidence of Australian citizenship
Division 5 – Personal identifiers
Subdivision A – Obtaining personal identifiers
Subdivision B – Obligations relating to identifying information
Part 3 – Other matters
Schedule 1 – Pledge of commitment as a citizen of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Additional information: Detailed information can be found on the Citizenship website. See: www.citizenship.gov.au
Related amendments:
The Australian Citizenship Regulations 2007 will commence on 1 July 2007 and prescribe various matters under the new Act. Please see the Notice of Legislative Change relating to the Australian Citizenship Regulations 2007 for further information.
See: Australian Citizenship Regulations 2007
Application of the new provisions:
Please refer to the notes relating to the Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Act 2007 above.
Forms: The following application forms have been updated in accordance with the new Act:
Form 118 Application for Australian citizenship by descent
Form 119 Application for evidence of Australian citizenship
Form 124 Application for conferral of Australian citizenship
Form 128 Application for renunciation of Australian citizenship
Form 132 Application to resume Australian citizenship
Form 1195 Proof of Identity for applications made online for conferral of Australian citizenship
A new Form 1272 Application for Australian citizenship for children adopted under full and permanent Hague Convention arrangements has been developed to support the new provisions in the Act.
The information Form 1027i How to apply for conferral of Australian citizenship has also been updated.
The following Forms have been withdrawn:
Form 975i Australian citizenship – citizenship by birth in Australia
Form 1037 Declaration of a New Zealand citizen parent of an Australian born child
Form 1014i Australian citizenship – British and Maltese former child migrants
Form 1063i Becoming a citizen – what you should know
Form 1113i Deprivation of Australian citizenship
Form 1114i Australian citizens who acquired another citizenship prior to 4 April 2002
Form 1184 Application for an evidentiary certificate
Form 1185 Evidentiary certificate
Instructions:
The Australian Citizenship Instructions (ACIs) have been rewritten to support the new Act. The ACIs will also continue to be available on Legendcom. Parts of the ACIs will be publicly available on the Citizenship website.
See: www.citizenship.gov.au.
Effect on delegations: All the existing delegations and authorisations under the old Act and old regulations have been repealed. New delegations and authorisations, that are consistent with those under the old Act, have been made.
Effect on systems: Departmental systems have been updated to support the new Act.
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