this post was submitted on 07 Mar 2024
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Once you've got a birth certificate sorted I would recommend going a bit further with the document hunt - assuming you were born after 1986. If you ever need to prove you're a citizen (which you may for some jobs) and you were born post '86 you'll also need to track down a copy of a parent's Australian birth certificate or other proof of their Australian citizenship before your birth. You'll also need this proof of citizenship if you want a passport in the future so it's worth tracking down.
Wait what? You need a parents birth certificate to prove that your birth certificate proves you're an Australian citizen?
If you were born post '86 your Australian birth certificate is not considered sufficient proof of you being an Australian citizen (not sure on the reason for that year being the cutoff), so if you're going for the natural born Australian line of proof you would then need to prove you had a parent who was a citizen at the time of your birth. It doesn't necessarily need to be your parent's birth certificate, a passport from before your birth would also count (as would the certificate you get when becoming a citizen if they weren't born here).
At least though my generation only has to go back one step to prove citizenship. It's going to be harder work for the growing number of people who have parents born after '86 and will therefore have to go back to their grandparents birth certificates if their parents didn't get a passport or citizenship certificate before they were born.
Ugh that's stupid and makes me nervous for when I apply for a passport. I don't have any contact with either of my parents, and it's not really likely either of them would just give me their birth certificate if I asked. Luckily they were both born in the 70s then, because my grandparents on both sides are all dead too
This seems stupid, and I'd argue rather discriminatory.
It certainly makes things harder than they should be IMO, I've always thought it should be more along the lines of just proving you are who you say you are instead of chasing parents etc.
The reason for the cutoff of ‘86 is because our laws on citizenship changed that year. Before then, we used ‘jus soli’ (right of soil), which meant that if you were born in Australia, you were Australian. My father was born here to immigrant parents and was granted citizenship at birth. It also still works that way in the US. We now use the system of ‘jus sanguinis’ (right of blood) which means citizenship is transferred by descent. This is the system that’s used in most european countries. Everyone born in Australia, even the child of a tourist, is issued an Australian birth certificate, so it no longer proves citizenship.
The major flaw in our system is that, outside of citizenship certificates, we don’t have anything other than passports that proves you’re a citizen. Most people only get them when they’re planning to travel overseas, and they cost a lot of money. European countries have government ID cards to prove citizenship because international travel is a lot more common there. But many Australians never travel overseas, and it can stretch back for generations. That’s just not the background politicians usually come from.