Wigan Warrior

Our baby is due in 7 weeks and I'm hoping someone can help answer a few questions:
- What needs to be done to register the birth and get a birth certificate in Australia - specifically Melbourne?
- Will the baby be classed as an Australian citizen (we are currently on PR, mot applied for citizenship yet). Do I need to do anything to notify the birth to Uk?

Cheers,
ww

JAJ

It's state based, so you contact the Births, Deaths & Marriage Registry for Victoria.
http://www.bdm.vic.gov.au

The child will be an Australian citizen, however the child needs a citizenship certificate to prove it. Use form 119: http://www.immi.gov.au/allforms/pdf/119.pdf and pay the fee (around A$60).

Don't listen to anyone that tells you that an Australian passport is sufficient proof of citizenship - it's not.

U.K. consular birth registration is not available in Australia, so your only option to document British citizenship is to get the child a British passport.

Since the child won't have a U.K. citizenship certificate, make sure you keep a file in a secure place of child+parents birth certificates (plus copy of passport ID page) and that the child has this when older. In case passport is lost and he/she ever has to re-evidence citizenship. Also, do not throw away expired passports - keep in a safe place.

Bear in mind that the child will be British "by descent" and hence will not be able to pass on British citizenship to the next generation (if also born outside the U.K.) unless other ties are developed to the U.K.

roaringmouse

Our experience of 2 different hospitals in the Melbourne area is that they give you the form to complete for registration some time after the birth. I think it costs around $30 for the certificate.

Lisa and Martin

We were given the 'Blue Book' when we checked out of the hospital with our new bubba, this is the official health record that you take everywhere with you. The hospital had put all the relevant forms for benefit claims and birth certificate registration in with that. You can pay a small amount to get a plain certificate, a bit more for mutiple copies, or a silly amount for a fancy style with pretty pictures on it. They clearly think sleep deprivation will have turned your brains to mush at this point.

Wigan Warrior

Thanks all for the info

Wigan Warrior

Looks like the Melbourne registration is all pretty straight forward. We'll be applying for citizenship next year and will apply for her Aus passport when we apply for ours.

Anyone know what needs to be done for the British citizenship ? Do I need to register her? Fco.gov.uk seems to imply they don't accept registrations of Australian born children.

Sherlock Holmes

If I read it correctly, JAJ has answered that in the last part of his reply above.

Lisa and Martin

If you do decide to get her a British passport, look up some of the other threads on passports for babies on here before you do. It's done by appointment at some Australia Post Offices, but is often not as straightforward as it should be. It took me 3 attempts even though I followed all the instructions and brought all the right ID.

Pomster

our daughter was born in Aus.
We were citizens but if you are PR your child is automatically a citizen (or this was the case in 2007).

At the hospital the midwife gave us birth form, which you use to apply for a birth cert.

And we got our daughter a British passport at 6 weeks. She needed my passport (H is British by descent so cannot pass on his nationality) her birth cert and form C2? from BHC website. Was pretty simple and she is a dual national.

We just renewed her British passport and that was straightforward too.

steen1976

Just about to go through this soon and had a bad feeling this part would be a nightmare and you've just confirmed it.

Lisa and Martin

Not so much a nightmare, it's just that the document that you download from the web asks you for a specific list of documents to take with you, but when you get to the P.O. their system asks for a different list and there's no flexibility. In addition they required proof of British Citizenship of the parents, so I took certified copies of our passports. They rejected those and said the system required our birth certificates as evidence. I pointed out that those didn't constitute proof of citizenship, merely where we were born, and we could have become citizens of any other country and given up our British citizenship at any point in the intervenening years. The staff member commented 'good point' and sent me away again. Ho hum.

JAJ

Passports aren't enough as they don't prove that you're British otherwise than by descent.

Where someone was born before 1983 then a U.K. birth certificate is normally considered evidence of British citizenship absent compelling evidence to the contrary (parent's occupation shown as diplomat, for example).


Possible, but unusual. The Passport Service is supposed to keep a list of those who have renounced British citizenship to stop them being issued British passports (unless they resume citizenship).