What it does
The Australian Citizenship (Transitionals and Consequentials) Act 2007 is a machinery statute whose sole function is to retire the Australian Citizenship Act 1948 (the “old Act”) and to integrate the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 (the “new Act”) into the existing statute book without legal discontinuity. It operates through three Schedules.
Schedule 1 is divided into two Parts. Part 1 (items 1–41) performs textual surgery on 21 separate Commonwealth statutes. Typical changes include substituting “Australian Citizenship Act 2007” for “Australian Citizenship Act 1948” (see, e.g., item 1 amending s 21AA(5)(c) of the Administrative Appeals Tribunal Act 1975; item 5 amending the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act 1979; item 23 amending s 85ZZH(d) of the Crimes Act 1914). More substantive rewrites remove obsolete concepts such as “Australian protected person” (items 6, 19–22 amending the Circuit Layouts Act 1989 and Copyright Act 1968) and replace “certificate of Australian citizenship” with the new Act’s language of “approval to become an Australian citizen” (items 9–15 amending the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918; items 34–37 amending the Higher Education Funding Act 1988). Item 27 rewrites cl 2 of Sch 1 to the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 so that the exemption for “citizenship documents” now expressly lists the new mechanisms of registration, approval, notice of evidence, renunciation and revocation.
Part 2 of Schedule 1 contains the bluntest provision: item 42 simply repeals the whole of the Australian Citizenship Act 1948.
Schedule 2 makes a minor consequential tweak to the , replacing references to the old two-year window for English courses with a new 12-month rule keyed to the “visa commencement date”.