10.4225/03/590aa6edd5f5f Betts, Katharine Katharine Betts Birrell, Bob Bob Birrell Making Australian citizenship mean more Monash University 2017 Australian citizenship monash:64110 journal article 1039-4788 Policy 1959.1/482289 2017-05-04 03:58:36 Journal contribution https://bridges.monash.edu/articles/journal_contribution/Making_Australian_citizenship_mean_more/4969346 After over 30 years of increasingly easy access, Australian citizenship is becoming harder to acquire. Permanent residents must now wait for four years before applying (instead of two), and the Government intends to introduce a formal citizenship test. This latter change is the subject of heated debate. The emotion surrounding this debate can be best understood as an instance of the clash of two competing views about what citizenship ought to mean: the procedural and the patriotic. Copyright. Monash University and the author/s