I did not. And neither, I suspect, did she think I ever would. Mosman is the spiffiest suburb on Sydney’s North Shore, and the quickest way to get Mosman neighbours pestering Her Worship’s office was to plant an Australian native, and worse, threaten their views.
When you roll up in your best gear for your Australian citizenship ceremony, the deal is the mayor gives you the wattle shrub, a certificate, a cup of tea, and a biscuit. A wise mayor also keeps a box of tissues for snifflers — it’s an emotional moment for many immigrants who’ve found a haven from tough places.
I neither took an Australian passport, nor snuck down to our consulate to renounce my native citizenship. In 2000, few Kiwi migrants to Australia would have. Dumping your Kiwiness wasn’t only unthinkable — it was unnecessary.
In Strine badinage, with all its (half) playful racial labels like Pom, Wog, Paddy, and Lebo, Kiwi is one ethnic term that’s almost devoid of negative edge. We’ve been a part of the Australian furniture, and even the sheep-shagger jokes are delivered with knowing affection. (Australians are partial to a merino — they’ve crutched more than a billion of the woolly dears).
Its 17 years since I failed to plant my wattle, and times have changed. The rights of Kiwis in Australia diminish, and reactions to our protests seem cavalier. So it was a sweet moment when Barnaby Joyce, their Deputy Prime Minister, discovered that much as he was born in NSW, he was (oh the shame, the agony) a New Zealand citizen.
He didn’t — did anyone? — know a 1948 New Zealand citizenship law includes a marvellously antique and sexist edict that declared he could be an Argentinian gaucho, and still a New Zealander — because his dad was a Kiwi. (No mention back then, of mums giving birth and life).
Because the creaking Australian Constitution of 1901 bans even accidental dual nationality of MPs, the election of Joyce, a farm boy as Strine as they come, is probably illegal. Joyce had wasted his youth playing second row for bush rugby teams like the Walcha Rams, never knowing he would have been welcome here with the Maniototo Maggots.
I was up in Queensland when the news broke, and gleeful Aussie headlines announced their Deputy PM was a Kiwi.
"Baa-naby Joyce," "Beached, Bro." etc.
Joyce joins five other Australian pollies who’ve found legal quirks ensnared them as involuntary Greeks, Brits, Kiwis, and Italians. More will follow, as witch hunts shake the family trees.
New Zealand accepts dual citizens as MPs. Dual citizenship is actually a dual honour which makes sense in today’s fluid world — if a young Scots visitor marries a Kiwi girl, and takes citizenship so he can work and raise a Kiwi family, do we really desire that he renounces the tartan? Vice versa, a proud Kiwi woman who becomes part of an American family?
I added my Australian citizenship, in quite different times. Their government was mad keen that long-term residents "do the right thing" and also become Australians. The urging was relentless, and as the country had treated me kindly, it seemed churlish to stay as a hold out.
Australia’s "answer" to the woes of future Barnaby Joyces, will be pushing political parties to make sure their candidates quickly renounce any conceivable second citizenship. It’s a safe bet they won’t address the constitutional idiocies, because the reform process is difficult.
Today the quality of Australian government rushes backwards, and you see the country suffering. It’s partly because political standards have gone south, and co-operation seems a forgotten word. It’s also because their 116-year-old constitution created an upper and lower house system that is no longer fit for purpose. Government becomes progressively more dysfunctional, as political opportunists bastardise the flaws.
Australia was once a "roll up your sleeves and fix it" sort of place. Amazingly, the current wisdom is that this clearly senile constitution is a cancer for which there’s no practical cure. C’mon guys.
I still keep my Australian citizenship certificate safe in a desk drawer, and you’ll understand the reasons. For all the issues with Australia, it’s close to home, and far too good a place to give up on.
- John Lapsley is an Arrowtown writer.
