A northern peninsula MP is astonished by figures that reveal nearly a fifth of local residents do not have Australian citizenship.
Davidson MP Jonathan O'Dea said more than 52,500 residents from Davidson, Warringah, Pittwater and Manly Council areas were not Australian citizens.
"That means that just 82 percent northern peninsula residents are citizens,'' he said. "That's less than the 85 percent Australia-wide, and nowhere near the overall figure for NSW, which is 91 percent. I find it difficult to understand,'' Mr O'Dea said.
The figures, from the 2011 Census, show that in Warringah and Manly 80 percent of the population are citizens, followed by 87 percent in Davidson and 88 percent in Pittwater.
In Manly there are 15,325 non-citizens, a figure Mr O'Dea puts down to the transient nature of the area. "But I don't understand why there are more than 29,000 non citizens in an area like Warringah which is made up mostly of suburbs where people move to settle. I would think the final step in any migration process is to take Australian citizenship.''
Mr O'Dea said his mother, who came from a non-English speaking background, acquired citizenship soon after she arrived with her family after the war.
"However, I acknowledge it did take my grandmother and aunt more than 30 years to 'make the leap', but once they did, they never looked back,'' he said.
Mr O'Dea said the profile of new Australians had changed dramatically since 1949 when citizenship was introduced to Australia.
"The top five nationalities then were Italian, Polish, Greek, German and Yugoslav. Today, in 2012, our new citizens are mainly from the UK, India, China, the Philippines and South Africa,'' concluded Mr O'Dea.
