Local councils won’t be forced to run citizenship ceremonies on 26 January after Labor scrapped a controversial rule made by Scott Morrison.
The Greens-led Merri-bek council, in Melbourne’s north, was one of the first to welcome the decision allowing councils to hold citizenship ceremonies within 3 days of the national holiday.
“We will always listen to Traditional Owners and our First Nations community about matters that are important to them. January 26 is a painful day for many in our community, and isn’t the right date to celebrate,” said Merri-bek Mayor Angelica Panopoulos.
The development follows a resolution ratified by Council this week to discontinue citizenship ceremonies on 26 January.
Earlier, on 7 December, a recommendation from Council’s First Nations Advisory Committee, Merri-bek Council (formerly Moreland) voted to stop holding Australia Day citizenship ceremonies to recognise the date as a day of mourning and survival for First Nations people.
The decision was suspended during the same meeting after a Labor councillor moved a motion to repeal it.
But the recission motion lapsed after no one was prepared to move or second it when the council reconvened on Tuesday night.
“Once it was clear that the decision we made on Dec 7 was going to stand, we had cheers from members of the public in the gallery,” Cr Panopoulos wrote in a Facebook post.
The decision was in breach of a Citizenship Code rule introduced by the Morrison government according to which any council that didn’t hold ceremonies on 26 January could be stripped of their right to hold citizenship events.
The overturning of the controversial rule by the federal government means councils can now hold the citizenship ceremonies any time from January 23 to 29. Immigration Minister Andrew Giles said his government was “removing red tape” around the ceremonies, although he added it remained a “strong expectation” they were held on January 26.
“Australian citizenship is an important common bond for all Australians, whether by birth or by choice, and lies at the heart of a unified, cohesive and inclusive Australia,” he said.
“The government’s priority is to ensure that, where people have made the choice to become Australian citizens, they are afforded that opportunity in their own communities, with friends and family, in a timely way.”
The federal government says there are less than 100,000 citizenship applications on-hand for the first time in five years.
With AAP
