Australian Citizenship Ceremony

In August 1999, on the 50th Anniversary of the Australian Citizenship Act, the act that created the status of Australian Citizen, Phuoc Hue Monastery collaborated with the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs to organise one of Australia’s largest citizenship ceremonies at Phuoc Hue Monastery. Preparation work involved mass publicity, coordination, interpreting and interviewing of hundreds of applicants. Sarah Stock of The Australian newspaper reported: “[l]ined up on a podium at Sydney's Phuoc Hue Buddhist temple, 492 new  Australians … stood proud and unfaltering as they swore their oath of allegiance in the nation's first citizenship ceremony at a Buddhist temple.” She describes as the ‘new Australians,’ “little boys dressed in tuxedos, girls wearing pretty frocks and flowers in their hair, mothers and fathers and grandparents  -- all among a blur of hundreds of Australian flags.” Most significantly, the Vietnamese were now ‘Australians’ and Phuoc Hue Monastery, a venue for the induction of ‘new Australians.’