Newly-appointed Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has confirmed to The New Daily that he stands by his predecessor’s letter. “The Mayor of the City of Moreland is imposing her political views on all members of her community,” Mr Dutton said in a statement. The ministerial message has been an “integral part” of the citizenship ceremony for many years under both Coalition and Labor governments and “that position will not change,” he said. Since taking office in October, the mayor has refused to read the ministerial statement at two citizenship ceremonies, on advice from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection that she was within her power to do so. If Mr Dutton follows through with the threat, eighty of the municipality’s residents will lose their chance to become citizens on Australia Day because the only three persons authorised to conduct the citizenship ceremony in Moreland — the mayor, deputy mayor and general manager — would be barred from doing so. “Unless the Minister himself or a delegate attended and presided over the citizenship ceremony on that day, it would need to be cancelled and moved to another municipality, and given the time pressures I’m quite certain, from the advice I’ve received, that that’s just not logistically possible at this short notice,” Ms Hopper said. The mayor is currently seeking legal advice before replying to the letter, but hinted to The New Daily she may give in to the Minister’s demand for the sake of her local residents. “My first priority is to the eighty people who are due to have citizenship conferred upon them,” she said. “I’ll do what it takes to make sure that those 80 people become citizens.”
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 22:15:21 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015