Passing by reference or value

[CanadaGuy]

Being new to Python, I figured I was bound to run into something like this. I'm used to programming where values are passed around, and I had to go to great lengths to operate on references. Now in Python it seems to be the reverse. I wanted to make sure I'm not overlooking something in this fairly simple example:

a = objectA
b = objectB

new_list = [
    a,
    b,
    a,
    b,
    a]

print(new_list)

If I execute this code, (I think) I will get a list of the addresses of each object. In Python, this would produce a result where all the 'a' objects would be at one address, and all the 'b' objects would be at another. Is it the (only) way that if I want new instances of the a and b objects, I need to use something like the following instead?

import copy
a = objectA
b = objectB

new_list = [
    copy.copy(a),
    copy.copy(b),
    copy.copy(a),
    copy.copy(b),
    copy.copy(a)]

print(new_list)

I learned of the idea from a few StackOverflow posts for lists, as well as the official Python docs:
https://docs.python.org/3/library/copy.html

I just want to make sure I haven't overlooked any other ways that are either easier or more straightforward.