2022 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 4(2) administrative mark as well as social resentments that would be played out in the developing citizenship criteria of PNG and its racialised articulation of who was ‘in’ and who was ‘out’.12 This article seeks to identify a correlation between the racialised categories by which PNG inhabitants were governed in the colonial period and the citizenship statuses that flowed from these post-independence. In the lead up to PNG independence, Australia had to decide what responsibility, if any, it would take for APP inhabitants of PNG who did not become automatic citizens of that country on Independence Day. Drawing on recently opened Australian Government files, this article demonstrates how the intersection of Australian policy choices with those of PNG resulted in the aforementioned cohort of APPs remaining stateless in the aftermath of PNG independence. At present, there is little to nothing written about APPs beyond explanations of the legal basis of the status in Australian citizenship law.13 The likely explanation for this rests in the fact that APP status has not had the same judicial scrutiny or press attention as that had by the status of Australian citizen (without right of entry). Further, it may also be the case that APPs have had little scholarly attention because of the faint, and, as yet unresolved, trace that the category has left in the archival records. Despite these issues, this article offers a close examination of these archival remnants and attempts to cast light on the particular historical moment that had such unhappy consequences for a cohort of individuals whose perceived racial characteristics left them betwixt and between in the separation of PNG from Australia. In Part II, an overview is offered of the legal basis for Australia’s administration of pre-independence PNG. It explains why Territory of New Guinea inhabitants were not given the status of Australian citizen and considers how racial considerations in relation to both PNG and Australia were front and centre in formulating how Australian nationality law and Australian immigration law were applied to PNG inhabitants, as a matter of policy, in the period leading up to the election in December 1972 of the Whitlam Labor Government. Part III describes the political process within PNG over the period of 1972–75, which resulted in the PNG Constitution’s citizenship provisions effectively imposing a racial qualification for the acquisition of automatic PNG citizenship on independence. Following on from this, Part IV offers a discussion of how the Australian Government decided over the same period what its policy response should be to PNG inhabitants who did not become automatic PNG citizens on Independence Day. Finally, Part V attempts to trace the specific and separate fate of those who retained or obtained APP status in the period between PNG independence and the formal abolition of APP status in Australian law on 1 May 1987. Ultimately, the article concludes that the story of the APPs cannot be fully excavated within the extant and currently available archives. It does, however, identify an important lacuna in the history of Australian citizenship law, in particular, concerning the relationship between racialised categories of national belonging and incidences of statelessness. It is suggested that future releases of Government archives may, in time, enable this gap to be more comprehensively explored. 12 13 Michael Somare quoted in Wolfers (n 7) 346. See, eg, ibid 301–303; Rubenstein and Field (n 1) 104–106; John Goldring, The Constitution of Papua New Guinea: A Study in Legal Nationalism (Law Book Co 1978) 204. 216