There have been conflicting messages in recent weeks as to whether the newly-elected Morrison Government will move forward with changes to Australian Citizenship requirements, proposed in April 2017. These changes would have resulted in stricter English language testing and required the signing of an “Australian values” statement, as well as increasing the residential requirement for permanent residents from one to four years.

In the meantime, the Government has allocated $9 million to recruit and train additional staff to process the 222,800 citizenship applications in the pipeline. Between 1 July 2018 and 31 May 2019, 132,000 conferral applications were finalised, up from 70,000 in the same period last year.

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