I brought my Australian passport this week. It’s the first time ever, I was glad that my Nana passed away earlier this year because I’m sure she wouldn’t be impressed. I didn’t think I’d be needing a passport so soon but in true Australian fashion, I now need one if I want to access my ATO account for The Design Dept. The myID app that the ATO uses to verify your identity requires a ‘strong’ level of identification that can only be achieved with an Australian Passport or weirdly, a Western Australian drivers licence.
I’ve had an Australian business for over 7 years and this year was the first time I’ve had to be Australian (or be a driver in WA) to be able to access my own accounts - which I do only to confirm how much BAS (business activity statement) I owe the Australian government. This surprised me because there must be stacks of non-Australian business owners in Australia.
I’m lucky, I guess, that I decided to become a citizen last year so I’ve already completed the first part of the ‘becoming Australian’ journey. I’m also lucky that New Zealand lets me have dual citizenship. I know that the People's Republic of China strictly prohibits dual nationality so surely this would be affecting lots of Chinese business owners in Australia.
If your ring myID will give you a temporary 12 month access code while you sort a passport out but I’m not sure what happens after that time runs out and you don’t manage to get one… It's a strange / annoying requirement because Australian passports are almost double the price of most other countries. In the US right now it will cost you US$165 (AU$ 230) for a first time passport. In the UK you’re looking at £115 (AU$215) and in New Zealand it will cost you NZ$247 (AU$204). My regular, non urgent, Australian passport cost me AU$422 at the post office yesterday. If you add on the AU$575 it costs me to become a citizen, Australia is a pretty expensive place to pay taxes in!
Again, I’m grateful that I’m in a position to spend a grand on doing the ‘right’ thing but l can only assume that isn’t the case for every migrant in this country. Oh, before I forget migrants own one-third of all small businesses in Australia. This equates to 620,000 migrate-owned businesses nationwide. Isn’t that incredible? Not only do people move their entire lives half way across the world, but they open new businesses with 83% of them starting only after moving to Australia, rather than being established overseas beforehand.
I have often felt like an alien sitting in these spaces - not because I’m an outsider but because I’m in these situations without possessing any of the barriers that the majority of migrants to this country face. Barriers like having English as a second language for example. This week at the Tech School I had a student who had been in Australia for 3 days. She had arrived from China that week and was straight into the secondary school system. I’m not sure if she understood a single word I said but she managed to follow along and completed all tasks better than most other students in the class - without speaking a word.
She was the quietest student in the class and if the teacher hadn’t mentioned her situation to me I would have just assumed she was simply shy. I can't even begin to imagine how incredibly insane it would be to come to another country and jump straight into a class of 24 rowdy students when you can’t even speak the language. My admiration for her was huge.
I can complain about the price of admission into this country but it doesn’t compare to the challenges that lay ahead for that young student as she navigates a new language, culture and society. As Australians, of which I now am, it's our responsibility to make sure that our newest members feel as welcomed as I did.
