2
British Subjects or Australian Citizens?
Young Australians today are surprised to learn how long the British identity
persisted in their country. From the time of the establishment of Australia as a
British penal colony in 1788 until 1948 British subjecthood, rather than
Australian citizenship, was the pre-eminent classification of citizenship status
at law. People born or naturalised as Australians were automatically British
subjects. Even at the end of the colonial period, with the establishment of the
Commonwealth of Australia in 1901, the people are represented in the
Constitution as “subjects of the Queen”. The laws and institutions of
Government of the new nation were largely inherited from Britain. British
Imperial law remained superior to Australian law. It was not until1948 that
Australian citizenship was created as a category under the Nationality and
Citizenship Act. However, citizenship did not exclude British identity under
law, as Section 7 of the Act stated that an Australian citizen “shall by virtue of
that citizenship, be a British subject”. It was not until the 1960s that
Australians began to be treated like other foreigners in the United Kingdom
and be required to seek permission to work there, and for Australia to cease
printing “British passport” on its travel papers (Ward 2004: 60-62). In 1984
Australia became the last former colony to drop the formal status of British
subjecthood in law (Chesterman 2005: 30-37).
Until the post-war period, most immigration to Australian was from the British
Isles. Australians maintained a dual Australian and British identity. Even until
the 1960s it was quite common to hear people describe England, a place they
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