Professor Kim Rubenstein of the Australian National University states that changes to Australia’s citizenship laws where citizenship will be cancelled if a terrorist is a dual citizen (thought to affect hundreds of thousands of Australians) are a profound shift in what it means to be an Australian citizen. Being able to be banished or exiled is similar to being subject to “the power of the monarch from feudal times” unlike the concept of citizenship in modern democratic nations, a more equal relationship, based on rights and mutual responsibilities. “Subject status,” she says, “makes citizens subject to the whim of the executive when their allegiance is no longer proven.” [“Citizen caned” by Tom Allard, The Canberra Times, 27 June 2015]
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
