Angus Wants Everyone Pledging Allegiance But Reckons His Own Mob Don’t Need To

Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has faced gentle questioning from First Nations representatives this morning about whether his proposed citizenship pledge applies retrospectively to the Crown, on whose behalf the Australian state currently operates.

Mr Taylor, who used Thursday’s Budget Reply to announce welfare access would be stripped from non-citizens including permanent residents, told reporters anyone wishing to receive 17 welfare payments should “pledge and become a citizen”, a phrase he described as the basic requirement of being Australian.

The comments arrived without acknowledgement that no such pledge, treaty or formal agreement has ever been concluded between the Australian state and the First Nations people on whose unceded land Parliament House currently sits.

“We strongly welcome the Opposition Leader’s renewed interest in formal pledges of allegiance” a senior spokesperson from a peak Indigenous body said. “We’ve got a few hundred outstanding requests dating back to 1788 if he’d like to start there.”

Sources within the Coalition were reportedly surprised to learn the citizenship framework Mr Taylor was defending so vigorously had been retrofitted onto a continent that had been operating under entirely different sovereignty arrangements for an estimated 65,000 years prior.

A departmental official confirmed Mr Taylor had not been required to produce any pledge in order to access his $221,000 base parliamentary salary, his Commonwealth Car or full Medicare access at the Royal Canberra Hospital.

Asked whether his definition of Australianness extended retroactively, Mr Taylor’s office referred reporters to a 2017 statement made at Uluru, which the Coalition had previously elected not to read aloud.