Chinese restriction, naturalisation and mobility in colonial and post-Federation Australia

In 1924, On Hing’s naturalisation certificate, issued in New South Wales in 1875, was tendered as evidence in a case heard before the Court of Quarter Sessions in Sydney. The case concerned On Hing’s daughter, Lucy Wong Sau, who had been arrested as a prohibited immigrant under the Immigration Act on her return to New South Wales after 35 years in China. With proof of Lucy’s Australian birth in the form of her birth certificate, and proof of her father’s Australian domicile in the form of his naturalisation certificate, the Court of Quarter Sessions ruled in her favour. Within months, however, the Commonwealth had appealed to the High Court, who ruled against Lucy, finding that she was not a member of the Australian community. In this paper I want to consider the interplay of naturalisation, mobility and Chinese restriction laws in colonial and post-Federation Australia, particularly within the context of the family. Before 1888, when naturalisation of Chinese was prohibited by law in New South Wales, nearly 1000 Chinese men were naturalised in the colony. Many of them sought naturalisation to avoid the prohibitive poll tax that was re-introduced with the 1881 Influx of Chinese Restriction Act. Over the following decades naturalised Chinese residents of New South Wales, and their families, continued to draw on their status as British subjects to negotiate anti-Chinese laws, particularly when they travelled out and back into the colony. In the paper I will trace the relationship between naturalisation and Chinese restriction laws in New South Wales from the 1880s, and discuss several notable cases, including that of On Hing and his daughter Lucy Wong Sau