Test

Taking into account the developments in the past 1 year, with a major revamp to Permanent Residency and Citizenship hurdles, it starts to look as though all those petty immigrants who come over here are looking less and less welcomed. Take for instance the proposed citizenship test where a future citizen must get 12 out of 20 questions correct before they are allowed citizenship.

Sample questions include “In what year did the European settlement of Australia start?”, “What is the floral emblem of Australia?” and “Who is the Queen's representative in Australia?”. These are not just ordinary multiple choice questions that any high school kid can answer. In fact I’m starting to wonder how many people born and bred in Australia all their lives, are able to answer all these questions correctly. Does it make you un-Australian if you didn’t know that Acacia pycnantha is the national flower? And that 1st September is National Wattle Day?

What if you didn’t even know the difference between a ‘brigalow’ and a ‘mulga’, or why Gum trees are really called gum trees, or that there are three levels of government in Australia, or that a pobblebonk is really a frog and a dunny is really a toilet, or that Mt Kosciuszko was named by a Polish man, Paul Edmund de Strezlecki? (Fancy spelling those names for your citizenship test!) Does that make you less Australian? What IS Australian btw, when Australia is made up of such a diverse range of people from different backgrounds whose combined heritage has contributed to the meaning of the word?

I understand the strict requirements for a certain standard of English because it is important that people who stay here speak the language where in some places is the only language ever spoken, but often the language barrier is a main hurdle faced by many people who do not come from English speaking backgrounds. The implications of these screenings may not be great to Australia but are certainly important for those who seek to escape the strife of their motherland.

I also fail to understand how a person can be judged as being un-Australian based on some pro-white view of the world and of Australia? I would not be surprised if this test is made without any representation or views from the other levels of society (okay, yes, I mean ‘coloured’ people). And just so you know, the Europeans were not the first to discover Australia (sorry Captain Cook, you were late by at least 40,000 years).

Next thing you know, they’ll be asking questions like, “It is okay for people to climb Uluru and snap pictures at the summit. True/False”. No prizes for guessing what the recommended answer will be.

The citizenship test proposal was conceived to ensure that future migrants will be able to integrate better and adopt ‘Australian values’ during their stay here. Truth is, if you are judged based on the amount of information you know out of a text book and your only motivation to learning all the material in it is to get that passport, then we all know how effective it will be in getting people to integrate.

The people who are proposing this test are forgetting about other aspects of multiculturalism. What about the diversity of languages used in the media? What about the representation of coloured people in Parliament or even local councils here? John So may be the mayor of Melbourne but the real power and decision making lie with the people who work in the same office as him (all coincidently colourless). He remains to this day, the Mascot Mayor.

Multiculturalism cannot be represented in a highly polarised society.

I’ll be quick to point out that there are increasing amounts of first-hand migrants to Australia (especially overseas students) who fail to integrate into society. Also those migrating as refugees, escaping war torn countries and abuse in their homeland; how well these people are coping with the whole idea of ‘being Australian’ remains unclear, but I know from experience that it is very scary and hard to be on the minority end of the scale, and as such many people resort to familiarity and escape the need to mingle with the rest of society for fear of rejection and other differences.

But multiculturalism does not mean having a large ethnic diversity in your cities, huddled away in their own respective ghettos shopping in their own specialist stores hanging around with their own types and completely alienating every one else. Nor does it mean the coloured and the colourless all living together in the same city in peace love harmony with no race riots.

Who’s fault is it that FAMA funded students come here to stay in overpriced ghettos, presumably knowing little of what lies outside CitySaver boundaries (or ski resorts for that matter), who refuse to take one step further and make friends with the Aussie bloke who sits next to you in class? Probably many people are at fault, but the fact remains that little is being done to tackle the problem of non-integration between migrants and locals apart from coming up with this shonky test.

A citizenship test would probably cause further division of such complex social structures because it sets out clear utilitarian views about who’s-who and what’s-what.