Australia: Citizenship tests: Mateship – or racism?

Mon Nov 12 13:41:09 UTC 2007

Citizenship tests: Mateship – or racism?
Nathan Lim
November 12, 2007 09:50am

ACCORDING to the website of the recently revamped Department of
Immigration and Citizenship, "There has never been a better time to be
an Australian citizen." There has seemingly never been a more
difficult time, either. At least not since the dark days of the White
Australia Policy, when our first Prime Minister Edmund Barton openly
declared that "The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended
to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman." Now, in
a society that trumpets a 'fair go for all', it is reasonable to
conclude that our great nation has progressed beyond such blatant
racism.

However, when Prime Minister John Howard and the Parliamentary
Secretary for Immigration, Andrew Robb, announced the Government's
planned amendments to Australian citizenship laws on December 11 last
year, our national embrace of multiculturalism suddenly loosened.
Under the proposal, the pre-required minimum stay for citizenship
applicants has been extended from two to four years. Performance in
cultural and language testing is now the determinative factor for
citizenship. By legislating these changes early in the election year,
the Government has turned the race to Kirribilli into a referendum on
who can best protect Australia from its greatest fear: intruders.

Ever wary of comparisons with the 'children overboard' saga of his
2001 campaign, Mr. Howard has quickly assured the public that the
tests are "all about cohesion and integration…not discrimination and
exclusion". Clearly though, a test by its very nature is exclusionary.
By making the attainment of citizenship solely dependent on a
candidate's knowledge of the Australian language, culture and values,
our multicultural reality is simply being ignored. Yet, this blissful
nescience is nothing new. The Prime Minister confessed that he has a
problem with the word multiculturalism when it is used to "emphasise
diversity rather than what unites us". Obviously, Mr. Howard cannot
accept that, for most Australians at least, it is our diversity that
does unite us. Or, as Joh Bjelke-Petersen advised: "If it looks like a
duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck."

Nonetheless, the Government claims that the citizenship test has
popular support. However, it only received 1644 submissions on the
issue, of which a mere 60% were supportive of the proposal. When
viewed in perspective with the 103,500 people who migrated here during
2005 and 2006, this statistic is hardly convincing. Moreover,
Australia's unique cultural hotpot would not be nearly as rich had a
language test been implemented for earlier migrant generations. Are
these people any less Australian as a result of not sitting an exam?
Of course not – and this is the problem inherent within any concept of
language testing.

Whilst proficiency in English is important in what remains a
predominantly English-speaking society, it is not the be all and end
all of what it means to be Australian. By insisting that "nothing
unites a country more than its common language, because from a
language comes a history and a culture", the Prime Minister has
assumed that our society is homogenous. I'm sure that the 12 500
people who became citizens on Australia Day this year and represented
111 countries would disagree with this conception of a 'common
culture'.

Likewise, a cultural test undermines Australia's diverse, pluralistic
reality. Whilst concepts such as equality, fair play and respect for
the rule of law are all enshrined in our democratic traditions, a
person's commitment to such values cannot be quantifiably measured,
especially not by a thirty question, pen-and-paper exam. Furthermore,
international experience has shown that citizenship tests are
notoriously unreliable. The official answer to a question about the
First Amendment that was used to examine early immigrants to the
United States was wrong. Of more recent embarrassment was the
discovery that the current guidebook for British citizenship
candidates includes many 'historical howlers'. The process of deciding
a person's complete membership of a society should be free of such
inaccuracies, not littered with them.

The intentions operating behind these amendments to our citizenship
policy are also dubious at best. Mr. Howard insists that the tests are
designed to "assist in the full integration of newcomers into the
mainstream of society". But immigration is slowly being moulded into
an election-turning issue, with the citizenship test being one of the
earlier election-year proposals debated in Parliament. And this
political prudence may well pay off, too. By constructing the need for
citizenship testing as a matter of national security, Johnny and the
'Values Police' are manipulating, to their own political advantage,
the undercurrent of Hansonian xenophobia that has become somewhat less
overt but remains as ubiquitous as ever.

In Animal Farm, George Orwell's allegory of political revolution, the
same method of manipulation was employed by the self-anointed 'lead'
pigs after the animals had overthrown their human owner. When
questioned about their consumption of all the milk and apples –
luxuries that were supposed to be evenly distributed – the selfish and
domineering pigs replied that if they weren't better fed, the farmer
would return. The other animals, paranoid about this possibility,
mindlessly believe the pigs' logic. Similarly, the belief of a few
that citizenship testing is Australia's best protection against an
impending 'cultural invasion' has been widely accepted as fact by the
masses fearing this doomsday scenario.

However, as Professor Brian Costar of Swinburne University's Institute
for Social Research recently wrote, "Citizenship tests hold out the
superficial promise of acting as some kind of population filter when
this can't possibly be the case."  In reality, the new system will
have no impact on the composition of Australian society because
candidates, by requirement, must have already been residing in
Australia for at least four years. Howard's appeal to paranoia is as
flawed as it is politically persuasive. The pigs would be proud.

Nevertheless, if Mr Howard's concerns about social integration exceed
political self-interest, the Government must improve the language
support program for migrants, rather than cut funding by $10 million
as it did in last year's Budget. Only time will reveal Johnny's true
intentions. Of course, an effective population filter and a fair
citizenship process are not mutually exclusive. But language and
culture testing will not just root out the 'bad eggs'.  On the
contrary, those who will be most disadvantaged by the tests are among
the most vulnerable and needy in our society. Annually, 30 000
refugees arrive in Australia courtesy of the immigration program's
humanitarian arm.

Many of these people, often displaced by war or civil strife, arrive
with little to no formal education in their own language, let alone
English. Professor Costar comments that, for these victims,
"Citizenship offers a sense of certainty and belonging that is
achingly absent from the refugee experience." And yet, our Government
has chosen to prolong their suffering.

Mateship in action, right?

Perhaps our Government should practise some of the social values that
it has sloganeered as 'Australian' – the very same values that will be
superficially examined in citizenship tests. Surely, there is far more
to being Australian than passing a thirty question paper! Indeed, a
person's commitment to embracing our cultural diversity is not a
matter for measurement.

Undoubtedly, Australia has progressed beyond the absolute racism that
characterised a previous era of our history.

However, the Government's citizenship amendments have reignited old fears that
were concealed by the rapid rise of multiculturalism. And these old fears may
well determine the outcome of the upcoming election.

In the meantime, we must decide whether or not a pen-and-paper test on
our language and culture is a legitimate method of allowing people to
become completely Australian – a quality that is, above all else, in
the heart.

Nathan Lim, graduating this year from Brisbane Grammar School, won the
non-fiction essay section of the annual literary awards run by the
English Teachers Association of Queensland, the Queensland Independent
Education Union and The Courier-Mail.

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,22743166-27197,00.html

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