A Newcastle Liberal councillor says the City of Newcastle should "stay out of the culture wars" and continue holding its citizenship ceremony on Australia Day.
Liberal councillor Callum Pull came out swinging against the council's decision to move its citizenship ceremony to January 25 after the federal government changed the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code to allow councils to hold citizenship events "on or around" Australia Day. Ceremonies previously had to be held on January 26.
"We should be welcoming these citizens and celebrating this day, not inflaming division and engaging in the culture wars," Cr Pull said.
"No other council in the Lower Hunter is pursuing this green-left madness."
Lord mayor Nuatali Nelmes said the council decision came after a survey of almost 700 new citizens conferred between 2020 and 2022 which "overwhelmingly" called for the January event to be moved to "a more culturally appropriate date".
However Cr Pull said he believed such consultation should have been "across the whole community, and not just a select group of people".
"The question needs to be asked - why was council doing community consultation around holding the citizenship ceremony on a different day when it legally was not able to move it at the time of the consultation?" he said.
"Nationally, Australia Day is the single most popular day for new citizens to take the pledge - in fact, many of them wait for this day to have their citizenship ceremony.
"Unless the date of Australia Day is changed, our citizenship ceremonies should remain on January 26."
A council spokesperson said the survey was a broad questionnaire to newly conferred citizens to gauge their overall experience, "in the spirit of continually improving such an important day for our new citizens."
"We asked open-ended questions to our new citizens, however many provided feedback suggesting that the city should consider moving the ceremony to a more culturally appropriate date," the spokesperson said.
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