A North Shore MP is astonished by figures that reveal more than a fifth of local residents do not have Australian citizenship.
Davidson MP Jonathan O'Dea said nearly 36,000 residents from Ku-ring-gai, Willoughby, Lane Cove and North Sydney Council areas were not Australian citizens.
"It means that less than 80 percent North Shore residents are citizens,'' he said.
"That's less than the 85 percent Australia-wide, less than greater Sydney which is 82 percent 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 just 69 percent of North Sydney's population are Australian citizens, followed by 78 percent in Willoughby, 84 percent in Lane Cove and 86 percent in Ku-ring-gai.
At a citizenship ceremony at Ku-ring-gai Council last night Mr O'Dea praised the 70 new citizens from 50 countries for strongly committing to Australia.
"There are around 110,000 people living in Ku-ring-gai and of that only 93,780 of us are Australian citizens – a figure which quite frankly astonishes me."
"I assumed more residents would be like you and embrace citizenship. At least all of you have done your bit today towards increasing that number for Ku-ring-gai,'' he said.
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,'' he said.
Mr O'Dea said while he understood there were many reasons why the new citizens had chosen Australia for their home, there was no doubt why they had chosen to live in Ku-ring-gai.
"It's a no brainer. It's beautiful, isn't it?'' he concluded.
