Second Melbourne council to vote on ending Australia Day citizenship ceremonies

A second Melbourne council will vote on whether to follow Yarra Council and scrap its Australia Day citizenship ceremony, despite warnings from the Turnbull government that it will lose the right to hold future citizenship ceremonies.

Darebin council, which borders the inner-city local government area of Yarra and runs from Northcote to Bundoora and Reservoir, will hold an urgent vote at its Monday meeting on whether to commit to following the Yarra in moving its traditional Australia Day activities from 26 January to a less politically contentious date, or whether to keep the current events in place while it lobbies the federal government as part of the #changethedate campaign.

Yarra council voted on Tuesday to abolish its annual citizenship ceremony on 26 January, stop referring to “Australia Day” in all its official correspondence, and instead hold a small event celebrating the area’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history.

The decision was immediately criticised by the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, as an “attack on Australia Day”.

On Friday the assistant immigration minister, Alex Hawke, stripped the council of the right to hold any future citizenship ceremonies, including those that were held on other dates throughout the year, to protect the “integrity” of the ceremonies from what he said was a political decision.

Greens MP Adam Bandt, whose electorate of Melbourne covers Yarra Council, offered to step in and officiate citizenship ceremonies himself, using the rights given to all federal members of parliament.

Greens senator for Western Australia Rachel Siewert has offered to do the same to any local government in WA seeking to scrap its 26 January ceremony. In December, Fremantle council backed down from plans to change the date of its annual celebrations after it was told it would lose its citizenship ceremony rights.

Under the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code, ceremonies must be apolitical, bipartisan, and secular.

In an urgent report to council, the City of Darebin said that if it decided to follow suit and hold its Australia Day Awards, renamed the Darebin community awards, alongside a citizenship ceremony on 25 January, there was a “serious and significant risk” that it would be deemed to be a political action and therefore in breach of the code.

But, the report said, breaching the code itself would not automatically cause the council to lose the right to hold citizenship ceremonies.

“There is nothing in the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 or on the Australian Citizenship Regulation 2016 which has the effect of making the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code legally binding,” it said. “However it is open to the minister to withdraw his current authorisation that enables Darebin to conduct citizenship ceremonies when he deems that the code has been breached … the minister’s discretion is unfettered and, as such, he is free to grant or revoke authorisation as he wishes.”

The report also said the federal government could not reduce the funding either Darebin or Yarra currently receive under general purpose grants, despite Hawke asking local government and territories minister Fiona Nash to review any funding Yarra received to perform citizenship ceremonies.

That funding is untied and allocated by the Victorian Grants Commission based on relative population shares, with Victorian local governments getting 20.6% of the available national share.

“Accordingly, under the current arrangements the commonwealth government has no mechanism to reduce an individual council’s funding,” the report said.

Darebin council has already voiced its support for the #changethedate campaign, with mayor Kim Le Cerf telling new citizens at this year’s Australia Day citizenship ceremony that: “It’s not something we put in our citizenship tests, but Australia Day, which marks the planting of the British flag at Sydney Cove and the beginning of colonisation, is also a symbol of the unfinished business we have with our First Australians in this country.”

An online survey distributed in July through the council’s community advisory groups found that 86% of the limited pool of 81 respondents supported the council’s support of the #changethedate campaign; 60% supported moving the citizenship ceremony to a different day; 61% supported an event that recognised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experiences of Australia Day; and 48% supported renaming the Australia Day Awards to the Darebin Community Awards.

Regardless of whether it changes the date of the ceremony, Darebin Council is expected to vote to add two Indigenous-specific awards to its existing awards ceremony, with the addition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leader of the year award and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth of the year award.

The other categories, which are usually awarded at a ceremony a week before 26 January, are Darebin youth of the year, citizen of the year, and community group of the year.

Writing in Fairfax on Saturday, Yarra Council mayor Amanda Stone said she “hadn’t quite anticipated” the media and political storm that followed Tuesday’s council meeting.

“We sincerely hope that the commonwealth reconsiders its decision,” she said. “We are disappointed but not cowed and hope that common sense will ultimately prevail.”