Bands/stars that Australians beieve are Australian...

Ned Kelly's parents were British!

Exactly who owns News Corp. these days I'm not sure but no doubt Rupert Murdoch (Aussie) still calls the shots.

Except he's no longer Australian

I suspect, ben, that Murdoch has dual citizenship

Yes, Mr. Murdoch has dual US and Australian Citizenship.

You can have Mel Gibson. We won't argue. Murdoch too, of course.

Wouldn't Murdoch have had to give up his Australian citizenship at the time he acquired his US citizenship as the rules didn't allow native-born Australians to hold another citizenship? Rules have since changed.

Anyway, Australia is a country of immigrants. You'd be outraged at Australians calling long-established immigrants "un-Australian" so I don't see how you can have it both ways and demand that they disown foreign-born pop and film stars.

I remember when the Bee Gees were a local band for local people. The typing class at school used to peck along to the steady beat of "Spicks and Specks", their first hit. I can never hear without also hearing all those fingers going "tap tap tap, tappy tap tap tap"
Oh, they left us and disowned us later, ungrateful hoors they are ...

#15 -- The US requires you to renounce any other citizenship when you become an US citizen but not all countries recognize such renunciations as having any effect. Australia may take the same position.

Australia had the requirement of renouncing Australian citizenship - or at least giving up your Australian passport - when you took another, until about ten years ago Vinny. That's what I was trying to say. As far as I know, no foreign government can force you to do it though. When I discussed it with UK Immigration back then, who were suggesting I should get a UK passport, I said "But I'd have to give up my Australian passport" They said "Who would tell the Australians? Nothing to do with us"

#10 Wrote: Ned Kelly's parents were British!

Have to disagree with you there. Ned Kelly's father John (Red) Kelly, was born in Tipperary, Ireland, 1820 and in 1841 was sentenced to 7 years transportation for stealing two pigs. When his sentence expired in 1848, he went to the Port Phillip[ district and in 1850 married the 18yo Ellen Quinn, an Irish "bounty migrant".

#19 -- He didn't say they were English, he said they were British. If "British" means something like "British subject" or "citizen of the United Kingdom," then British they were.