australian passports

[mummydoc]

not sure if anyone will be able to help .
basically myself, dh and dd1 have dual nationality - british and aussie . we lived there as perm residents and took out citzinship and dd1 born there. we moved back to blighty and had dd2 . now she has british passport ut we would like to get her an aussie one too. we know she can have one as she has beenborn to 2 australian parents living in uk ( in eyes of goverment) but i am struggling to work out what forms i need to use - i think i need to aplly for citzenship for her first and then a pssport , sadly you can no longer just ring australia house and ask them .....has anyone come accros this before ?

hi there,
The Australian citizenship website has a good 'wizard' which you go through to determine what type of citizenship you are entitled to. But in any case, yes you need to apply for citizenship first, and once that is granted you can apply for a passport. Fortunately all services can be done through the Australian High Commission in the UK so it is pretty efficient.
Hope this helps.

thanks rodent - will use wizard today .

Will be going through this with my LO born in Jan. You need to apply for an Australian Citizenship by Descent Certificate from the embassy. In Beijing this takes about a month to get but not sure about UK.

This is what you need to apply in China but I'm sure it would be similar in the UK:

checklist

There should be info on the UK Australian Embassy website.

Should also add that only after the certificate has been issued can you apply for a passport.

your child would be entitled to citizenship by descent as either parent is australian. It did not take that long for my dd1's to come back when we applied when living in the UK. Then we applied for the passport - again that did not take too long either from memory.

I am Australian and both my children, born in the UK, have Australian by Descent certificates.

I have not bothered with passports as they expensive and only last a few years for children. I only go over every 6 years and they just use their UK passport with a visa.

When they adults they can get an Australian passport if they decide to visit themselves or work over there.

I was told (by the Australian embassy) that we had to get Aussie passports for the dc (Australian dad, born in England) because you can't enter your own country on a visa

I'd gone to get a visa for me and ds1 on our British passports and was told I was in the wrong place for ds1 as he was a 'little Aussie' and therefore needed a passport not a visa

once we'd got the citizenship by descent certificate it was pretty quick to get the passports

To confirm what baslildonbond said, you cannot enter australia on a UK passport if you are also an australian citizen. Discovering this (when they refused my daughter's visa) a few days before a trip from the UK to Oz cost us a lot of money getting an Australian passport very quickly.

So I'd suggest, unless you have a good reason to do it, that you don't get Australian citizenship yet for your dd2. Why keep paying for 2 passports when one will do?