The federal government has written to local councils demanding they provide detail of new Australia Day dress codes that it instructed them to develop.

At least one inner Sydney council says it will not be imposing the dress codes for citizenship ceremonies on Australia Day, while the peak body for local government in New South Wales has criticised them as needless red tape.

Darcy Byrne, the mayor of Sydney’s Inner West council, which stretches from the waterside suburb of Balmain to Ashfield, says his council has not and will not develop the dress code, despite receiving a letter instructing him to do so within the month.

“There are people recovering from losing everything, from losing family members in the bushfires, and this is what the Department of Home Affairs and Minister Coleman are saying needs to be prescribed urgently? It’s beyond a joke, it’s beyond belief,” he told Guardian Australia.

“This is an inane, undergraduate culture wars stunt from the government, and citizenship ceremonies should be above that.

Unbelievably I have just received a demand letter from the Dept of Home Affairs insisting that we must immediately create a new dress code for citizenship ceremonies. Our continent has been engulfed in an inferno and acting as the fashion police is the Government’s priority?!1/3 — Darcy Byrne (@MayorDarcy) January 23, 2020

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, announced the changes to the Australian Citizenship Ceremonies Code, which would force councils to hold citizenship ceremonies on 26 January each year and to develop new dress codes, in January last year.

“I’m a prime minister for standards,” Morrison said at the time.

Scott Morrison and his government are in no position to be acting as the ‘fashion police’, the Inner West mayor says. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Byrne says the council has never experienced problems with people showing up to citizenship ceremonies in inappropriate clothing.

“These are very poignant occasions: next to having children or marrying your life partner it can be one of the most significant times in people’s lives.

“There is no problem with people not taking it seriously,” he said, adding that federal government MPs were in no position to be the “fashion police”.

He said the requirement was “absurd and unenforceable” and would be a waste of council resources, echoing sentiments from Local Government NSW, which has previously written to the minister for citizenship, David Coleman, to say the code was not necessary and would impose “additional regulatory complexity” on citizenship ceremonies.