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On the 9th of December 1971 I appeared before Reserve Magistrate David Bruce Moorhouse at Arawa on the island of Bougainville in the then Territory of Papua New Guinea, to swear allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her heirs and successors, and to observe faithfully the laws of Australia and fulfil my duties as an Australian citizen.
And today, forty-two years later, after having paid many hundreds of thousands of dollars in income tax to the Australian Government, having incurred no more than a few speeding fines and parking infringement notices against my name, and never having asked for a single cent in Government assistance and even now in retirement living off my own investments and savings, I like to think that I have kept my end of the bargain and that the Australian Government got themselves a good deal in 1965 when they paid my fare out to this wonderful country.
I am proud to call myself an Australian and to call Australia my home, and to do so not through some accident of birth but because of my own deliberate decision and years of hard work!
P.S. An old friend, who came out as a Ten-Pound-Pom, tells me that all he received from the Australian Department of Immigration to say that he had become an Australian in 1974 was an 'Evidentary Certificate' on a cheap letterhead, sans seal and Queen's picture. You get what you pay for, Frank! Or not, as when my red-neck neighbours yell "Flying the Australian flag doesn't make you an Australian!" as I hoist the flag while they hoist their own petard.
