A Tale of Two Australians
On a hot, steamy afternoon in January, Linda Burney* ducks into the Kogarah post office and says she wants a passport. The friendly staff there recognise her as their local member of federal parliament and so are only too pleased to assist her. Linda self-identifies as an Australian and thus confidently expects to be able to exercise her entitlement in obtaining one of the world’s most coveted travel documents.
[* All characters, names and scenarios used in this post are fictional and any resemblence to real people or situations is merely coincidental.]
Linda Burney, Federal Member for Barton. “I am a member of the mighty Wiradjuri Aboriginal nation…” Source
Mr Lim the postmaster, slides the passport application form across the counter to Linda. She quickly starts to fill it in. She doesn’t start fuming and stamping her feet and exclaim how dare Mr Lim question her bona fides. Of course she is an Australian citizen she could have screamed - he admits he recognizes her as his local MP and she is telling him that she self-identifies as an Australian.
No, instead she reaches into her handbag and pulls out the required documentary proof, as asked for on the application form by our Australian government, the issuing authority for passports. She knows this is not a ‘box-ticking’ exercise, but rather requires a high degree of responsibility by applicants to ensure complete accuracy and proof that she is, who she says she is.
For the system to maintain its integrity and the support of the Australian people she knows all applicants must provide government-certified and original, documentary proof - birth certificates, a citizenship and photo ID.
We can’t have any ‘fake Aussies’ getting passports on ‘home-made’ documentation can we?
Identification Documents required for Australian passport applications
Another Time, Another Place, Another Applicant
It’s late afternoon on a crisp, blue-sky, winter day in June at Thredbo. Dr Jakelin Troy* is heading back from the slopes to the Berghutte Ski Club lodge, a lodge her mother Shirley established on her Ngarigo Country in the late 1950s. Jaky always enjoys being on Country, her ancestral home that she says she can trace back through her mother, to her grandmother Sylvia and to her great grandmother Olive. These are the Aboriginal women who provided her Ngarigu love for, and connection to, this land, a connection that stretches back thousands of years. Or so Jaky tells us.
[* All characters, names and scenarios used in this post are fictional and any resemblence to real people or situations is merely coincidence.]
But, as Jaky unstraps her ski-boots back at mum’s lodge, she feels a slight pang of anxiety. Tomorrow is an important day. After a long drive through the night back to her home in Sydney she knows she will have to prepare for the most important interview of her career so far - the interview tomorrow afternoon for the Indigenous Professorship position at the University of Sydney.
“Calm down and concentrate," she says to herself as she sets off down the winding Thredbo road back to Sydney. This road was once a well worn track where her ancestors, the Ngarigu ‘ice-people’ had trekked up the mountain over millennia to feast on fat bogong moths. During the drive home, she goes over and over in her mind the stories of her people, the stories she has related many times on the ABC, Facebook and in conversations.
She knows her ancestral connections to Country run deep in her family, way back to Olive her great grandmother. The family memories and oral histories get a bit hazy around that time, as she recorded in her family documentary [at 02:50-04:40], but she can feel the Indigenous connection so strongly to Ngarigu Country that her Aboriginal ancestry must be true. She knows in her heart that she is Aboriginal - she so wants it to be true, that in fact it must be true.
“Anyway”, she muses, “I have the qualifications for the professorship and all the paperwork to confirm my Aboriginality that the Uni has asked me to provide. No one is actually demanding that I spend a fortune hiring a genealogist to actually go right back to see my great grandmother Olive’s birth certificate and further up the tree to prove where our Aboriginality originally comes from. I’ll get this job with the documents I already have!”
On arriving home she gathers the papers she needs for tomorrows interview - her CV, completed job application form and, most importantly, the Confirmation of Aboriginality Certificate (COA) and the supporting documents required to satisfy the Confirmation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Identity Policy of the University of Sydney.
She has done everything that has been asked of her to apply successfully for this ‘identified’ Indigenous position. What could possibly be wrong with that?
Jaky’s documentaion was most likely very comprehensive. She probably brought a Stat Dec to the interview stating that she, to the best of her knowledge and belief, complies with point 7(3) of the University’s policy above. Furthermore, she probably brought a Certificate of Aboriginality (COA) as described in point 7(2)(b) from a registered Aboriginal organisation, perhaps like the Ngarigo Nation Indigenous Corporation Inc. This is a fully approved registered Indigenous charity with ORIC [one of four registered Ngarigu Aboriginal organisations].
Jaky, her daughter Lara and mother Shirley are all listed as members of this Indigenous organisation [see page 4 here]. Additionally Jaky is a committee member on the board, a board that presumably might have been happy to vouch for her Aboriginality and provide her with a ‘letter stamped with the common seal and signed by a delegate of the incorporated Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisation’, in this case, the Ngarigu Nation Indigenous Corporation Inc.
We can surmise that the University HR department fully approved her application, and filed her documents in the full knowledge that the University had met all its legal requirements as specified in its Indigenous Hiring Policy, as she in fact got the job.
