Australia’s Home Affairs minister Tony Burke has been accused of “vote buying” by granting 12,500 citizenships to people in crucial Sydney seats ahead of the upcoming federal election.
Mr Burke’s new citizen blitz has enraged Western Sydney mayors, who say the Labor MP has taken citizenship ceremonies out of their hands, including a three-day event this weekend that will create 6,000 fresh voters, The Daily Telegraph reported.
The electorates where Mr Burke has hosted citizenship ceremonies so far have large Indian immigrant populations, and a 2022 survey by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace found that newer Indian arrivals were nearly twice as likely to support Labor than the Coalition.
The election must be held on or before May 17, but is yet to be called by the Prime Minister.
Mr Burke told The Daily Telegraph it was “outrageous to suggest” anyone eligible for citizenship should be forced to wait, and said he was “excited to attend ceremonies all around the country over the next few weeks”.
But Opposition leader Peter Dutton accused Mr Burke of “putting thousands of people through an express citizenship process so that they can vote in the election”, and Opposition Home Affairs spokesman James Paterson said Labor was politicising citizenship for “partisan advantage”.
Independent Queensland Senator Gerard Rennick said the citizenship blitz showed that Labor was prioritising staying in power over looking after Australians.
“This is one of the most desperate examples of vote buying I’ve ever seen,” he wrote on social media.
“It confirms what we’ve always assumed which is that the Labor Party use immigration to boost their vote.
“Which isn’t really all that surprising when you consider how bad the Labor Party is at governing. Anyone who has lived here longer than six months can quickly work that out.”
Independent MP for Fowler in western Sydney Dai Le told Daily Mail Australia she had been attending citizenship ceremonies for a decade and had never seen a minister at one until Mr Burke showed up at the Casula Powerhouse Museum in Liverpool to welcome 260 new citizens on Wednesday.
‘Minister Burke told me that he is going to conduct citizenship ceremonies every day for the next couple of weeks,’ Ms Le said.
Fairfield Mayor Frank Carbone said citizenship should be about pledging allegiance to Australia rather than to a particular party or minister.
“You would have to assume that the only reason why they’re doing this is to do a photo op and to try and give people as many citizenship as possible, trying to influence their vote,” he said.
Liverpool Mayor Ned Mannoun said Labor had “rushed through citizenship applications for 700 people” in his council area, and said it amounted to “stacking marginal seats better than Woolworths stacks shelves”.
But Blacktown Mayor Brad Bunting said he was “thrilled” that Mr Burke joined a citizenship ceremony on Tuesday.
“Blacktown City is the largest council in NSW by population, home to 435,000 people. Our city is incredibly diverse, with over 180 nationalities represented and languages spoken,” he said.
Header image: Tony Burke poses with Blacktown Mayor Brad Bunting and new citizens at a ceremony on Wednesday (Facebook).
