Citizenship by Descent
A person born outside Australia who is the natural child of an Australian citizen parent may acquire Australian citizenship by descent. A person becomes a citizen on the date they are registered as an Australian citizen by Home Affairs. A certificate of Australian citizenship is issued at the time of registration.
For more information including eligibility requirements and how to prepare your application, go to Become an Australian citizen (descent).
Apply Online
You can now apply to be registered as an Australian citizen by decent online through ImmiAccount. This is the preferred and most efficient way to apply.
Providing documents online
Please ensure that in all cases you submit colour scans of the original documents (not certified or notarised copies) together with English translations at the time of application.
All supporting documents should be a clear, high quality scan (at least 300 dpi resolution, up to 2MB in size). If you attach low quality scanned documents, processing of your application may be delayed.
If you have any enquiries or issues regarding your ImmiAccount, including information on how to upload documents online, please go to Applying online in ImmiAccount.
Processing Times
Citizenship by Descent applications are processed by the Department of Home Affairs in Australia. For the current processing time for a citizenship by descent application, please go to global processing times for a citizenship application.
Passports
Home Affairs is not responsible for the issuance of Australian passports to Australian citizens. For Australian passport services, please refer to the Passport Services section on this website.