Up to 2,500 Maltese may have renounced Australian citizenship

As many as 2,500 Maltese may have renounced their Australian citizenship over the years, a lobby group estimates.

The Southern Cross Group is asking Australian-born Maltese citizens who had to renounce their Australian citizenship by their 19th birthday in order to keep their Maltese citizenship to contact it.

SCG's Malta coordinator, Norman Bonello, said the group asked the Maltese government for data on the number of Maltese citizens for whom it has Australian renunciation documents on file. Preliminary estimates based on Maltese census data showing country of birth indicate that as many as 2,500 Maltese citizens may be affected.

SCG, a non-profit, volunteer-run, international advocacy and support organisation for the Australian diaspora, is lobbying the Australian government, as part of an official Australian Senate inquiry, to have Australian citizenship law changed so that such individuals may one day be able to resume their lost Australian citizenship and hold dual citizenship.

The Australian Senate's Legal and Constitutional References Committee recently opened a special inquiry into all aspects of the Australian diaspora. Submissions must be received in Canberra by February 27.

In the view of the SCG, Australian-born Maltese citizens living in Malta today, despite their present lack of Australian citizenship in the formal legal sense, are nevertheless important members of Australia's overseas community, with continuing and significant family, emotional and financial links to Australia. It feels it is unfair to exclude these individuals from Australian citizenship when Australia recently changed its law to allow dual citizenship.

Mr Bonello said the SCG believes its representations in Canberra will carry added weight if reinforced by individual submissions by Maltese citizens. It also suggested they should encourage friends and family in Australia of those affected to also make a submission.

Since February 10, 2000, when Maltese citizenship law changed, Australian-born Maltese citizens no longer had to renounce their Australian citizenship. Further, in July 2002, Australian law was amended so that a person who had renounced the Australian citizenship and was still under 25 years of age may resume it. But, Mr Bonello said, the difficulty was that most Australian-born Maltese who renounced their Australian citizenship before February 10, 2000 were over the age of 25 when the 2002 Australian change occurred and so still could not resume their Australian citizenship under Australian law as it currently stands.

For further information one can contact Mr Bonello on 7946 8329, e-mail norman@southern-cross-group.or or SMS one's name, home address, home telephone number, mobile phone number and the e-mail address to receive information.

A sample suggested text for submissions to the inquiry is available on the group's website - www.southern-cross-group.org/austdiaspora/ideas.html.

Further details can be found at http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/legcon_ctte/expats03/index.htm.