Saturday, January 26, 2008

Australian citizenship

Today was Australia Day and right across the country there were many celebrations and ceremonies such as this one at Glenelg. Pictured is a group of people receiving their citizenship.

Before being given their citizenship papers they recited the citizenship oath:

From this time forward, under God,
I pledge my loyalty to Australia and its people,
whose democratic beliefs I share,
whose rights and liberties I respect,
and whose laws I will uphold and obey.


All new citizens have the choice of making the pledge with or without the words 'under God'.

Prior to today these people had to satisfy certain conditions and pass the Australian citizenship test. The test is only recent (introduced in October 2007). It is designed to assist people who want to become Australian citizens gain an understanding of Australia’s values, traditions, history and national symbols.

4 comments:

Sally said...

Happy Straya Day for yesterday Gordon. My blog here from Sydney also had citizenship ceremonies.

Joy said...

What were you doing at the ceremony? You are Australian, are you not?

And thank you so much for listening to my radio show yesterday. I hope you enjoyed it!

joy
Norwich Daily Photo

Gordon said...

Yes I was born in Australia. I went to the ceremony out of interest; hundreds of of people were there. As well as the citizenship ceremony, many awards were presented eg the local citizen of the year.

I found your radio show very interesting. You are a very talented lady and obviously enjoy what you are doing.

Stefan Jansson said...

I'm a little late but still, Happy Australia Day! Glad that you can skip that under God bit!