Citizenship test will “erode the vitality of society”
Liberal backbencher, Petro Georgiou, says the Federal Coalition’s citizenship test is overwhelmingly regressive, reported ABC News on 8 August. Mr Georgiou says many ordinary Australians would not be able to pass the test and he would not vote for it. “The establishment of this test will, I believe, diminish Australia as the test excludes people who are committed to Australia and who could pass the present test,” he said. “The opportunities will be restricted, their participation will be impeded and the fairness and the vitality of our society will be eroded. I do not support this bill and I cannot commend it to the house.”
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My late mother was one of the lucky ones able to get out of Poland in time. She arrived in Australia in January 1939 and at that time would never have passed any test such as the current “Australian values” test had there been one then. In the year 2000, however, at the ripe old age of 93, she received an OAM for her 20 years of voluntary service to Amnesty International and human rights. So much for “Values Tests”. She would never have even been let into the country under the current nonsense.
I note the booklet’s statement on the policies which removed civil rights from Aboriginal people: ‘There has been a great debate on the intent of these policies, particularly over the forcible removal of children from their parents.’
This is misleading. Even the Howard Government agrees that the removal policies were ‘cruel and misguided’. Those words were approved by the Prime Minister, and appear on the Stolen Generations memorial in Canberra.
In the Great Hall of Parliament in May this year, Health Minister Tony Abbott said: ‘The forcible removal of Indigenous children from their families is an episode of which we are rightly ashamed.… The premise on which it was based – that children were better off away from their black families – was wrong, indeed repugnant. We should have known it then. We certainly know it now, and we do have to atone for it.’
The intent of these policies is well understood, and the booklet should have said so.
Surely we are looking for more in our citizens than an ability to name our floral emblem? Perhaps a love of Australia, a wish to commit themselves to our country, a desire to exercise their right to vote? Whether they can trot out the name of our first prime minister (how many of the general community can?) is not at the top of the list of qualities and values I would hold important in a fellow Australian (by either birth or adoption).
The citizenship test toally ignores the original dwellers on this land.
60,000 years of wisdom.
More wisdom there than in Howard’s little finger
Kevin Andrews’(a glove puppet operated by John Howard, his creator)new citizenship test is merely another example of “wedge politics”. The only test necessary for citizenship, given that one has no criminal record, should be a desire to be Australian. Surely, any fair-minded, home-grown Australian could see that such a desire to be one of us is the greatest compliment we could be paid. To extend the waiting period and impose a peurile and demeaning test is not only regressive, but insulting to those who have come here and made such an immense and priceless contribution to our society. It is John Howard telling them that, if he had been able, he would have perpetrated the same indignity on them. While those of us who think realize that this is but another of his stunts designed to drive a wedge into our society and promote fear of “the other” in the hope of lifting his spurious image as a leader, it is disturbing that a good proportion of us are fooled.
Everyone is now thinking of good joke questions for the Test which point out how stupid the questions are. But I have a question which I think REALLY should be in it:
Will you freely let your daughter marry anyone she chooses without any adverse consequences?
That seems to me an issue really worth discussing.
The citizenship test is a step in the right direction, as with a lot of policies it may need some tweaking but it is definitely worth having, along with stronger asymilation laws that recognise OUR laws in OUR country, i.e. if you are asked to remove a headress before entering a bank for safety reasons, you do so, if your religeon prohibits that then you will have to look at an alternative method or move to a county that allows it, we have bent over backwards to accomodate other countries laws for too long, that is why i believe the citizenship test should be used (and tweaked) and not scrapped (we have already had the new govt. scrap workchoices instead of revising it, now we have gone back to a union IR system decades old, dont let this happen again.) Keep the test and keep Australia Free!