Testing Times
The federal government has leaked to a newspaper a sample of the questions they are allegedly planning to put on their new citizenship test. *(see clarification at end of this post)
One of the lesser noticed measures in the Budget was the announcement that an extra $123 million will be spent implementing and administering the new citizenship test, including over $16 million for Orwellian sounding “Australian values statements” and “Australian way of life booklets”. According to the Minister, “permanent and long-term temporary visa applicants will be required to sign a statement that acknowledges they will respect the Australian way of life and abide by Australian laws, before a visa will be granted.” (which sounds not dissimilar to a suggestion made last year by former Labor Leader Kim Beazley, which he was rightly pilloried for). Quite why it costs $10 million to get people to sign a statement as part of a visa application is not made clear. Maybe they need to pay Pauline Hanson to draft the wording.
I’ve written before about the citizenship test. At best, I think it will be a relatively harmless waste of money creating some extra red tape while the government tries to win some votes appealing to jingoistic nationalism. The risk is that it will feed a false and divisive perception that there is currently some significant problem with migrants not fitting in to Australian society.
The number of people receiving long-term residency rights in Australia each year is now in the hundreds of thousands, and still growing. If we’re actually serious about improving the integration of new arrivals, we’d be putting more money into settlement and support services, and broadening the number of people who are entitled to access them, instead of wasting money on ineffective distractions like a citizenship test.
You can read the sample questions leaked to the Herald Sun at this link. Most of them are fairly innocuous, although no doubt many Australian born people would get more than a few of them wrong. The big dog whistle question is number 15. No doubt the government is hoping there will be some outrage expressed about it so the resulting controversy can push the desired political buttons amongst their target constituency.
Question 15: Australia’s values are based on the …
a. Teachings of the Koran
b. The Judaeo-Christian tradition
c. Catholicism
d. Secularism
(the ‘correct’ answer is B).
It would not be unreasonable to interpret this question as implying that the (undefined) “Judaeo-Christian tradition” reflects (undefined) Australian values, and that Islam, Catholicism and Securalism do not reflect Australian values (or might even be – gasp – UnAustralian).
However, despite being raised a Catholic, I don’t interpret the question this way – I interpret it as showing that our government is worn out and has no substantial vision for Australia at all, so it has to resort to wasting our money on shallow jingostic symbolism in a lame effort to grab a few votes.
ELSEWHERE: Many other Australian bloggers have commented on this, with some interesting comment threads on some of the posts. Here’s a sample: Irfan Yusuf, John Quiggin, Andrew Norton, Catallaxy, Club Troppo, Larvatus Prodeo.
UPDATE (22/5): There were comments raised in posts on some of the other sites linked to above suggesting the questions did not come from the government and were made up by the relevant media outlet. I must say I thought the statement in the original media story that the “sample questions were devised by the federal government” was fairly unequivocal, but given some of the doubts raised in these comments, I asked as clear-cut a question as possible of the head of the Immigration Department and the Minister representing the government at the Senate Estimates Committee hearing. The response was a flat denial that the questions came from the government and a clear statement that the news report was wrong in saying the questions “were devised by the federal government. So whilst I still think the citizenship test is unnecessary and a waste of $123 million, I have to retract my criticism of the government about the content and intent behind the questions, seeing they didn’t devise them.
25 Comments, Comment or Ping
Steven Noble
How bizarre. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that “Australian values” are our old faves: “standing by your mates” and giving everyone “a fair go”. I don’t recall reading anything about either in The Bible. In fact, if these supposed “Australian values” are more than national myths, they probably have their roots in convict culture, with its rebellious and somewhat secular tendencies.
May 18th, 2007
Lynette2
The old dog whistle strategy again eh? What scares us more, wogs or workchoices? Pathetic.
May 18th, 2007
John Surname
Here’s another leaked question:
John Howard is:
a) Leader of the Liberal Party
b) Prime Minister of Australia
c) A really great guy
d) All of the above
May 18th, 2007
Floss
If we are to demand migrants are able to answer any 20 out of the 200 in the pool of questions, shouldn’t we also require every Australian born citizen should be able to do the same?
Surely a test of citizenship should be applied to all citizens? Surely this government would not deliberately set up a system of double standards?
We could end up with a country where the migrants have a better knowledge of history and the underpinning societal ‘values’ than the local residents. (ohmegawd …)
Not only that, the migrants will have signed an agreement to abide by the values, unlike the locals who are not required to sign any such agreement so therefore are not bound to live by those values and quite often don’t (mostly because they don’t know and don’t care what they are.)
Of course the thorny problem here is; if you did make the locals do the test as well – how would you deal with the large numbers who would not achieve anywhere near the 60% pass mark required?
May 18th, 2007
coconaut
I was disgusted by that quiz. In particular the question about what are Australia’s values are based on.
For a start, instead of Judeo-Christian:
- Australia is arguably more a product of the Enlightenment, with a strong committment to science, equality, democracy and questioning authority instead of religion.
- Australia is arguably more a product of Greco/Roman systems, with institutions of law, government, medicine, religion and public service modelled on those two ancient empires.
- Australia has arguably always had a strong secular heritage.
- Why was Catholicism separated from Judeo-Christian? Last time I checked Catholics were Christians too.
- And even what is the distinction in this case between Christian and Judeo??? Surely if Australia’s values are based on that particular variable, then it should just be a Judeo heritage, since Christianity is an offshoot of that religion.
Isn’t it possible for Australia to have MANY influences??? After all this country is not a single person, it’s actually 22,000,000 each with their own stories.
ARGH!
However, I think this has been done by the government to distract from the bad polls are the increasing speculation about Howard’s dire situation. If the electorate thinks he is going to lose, the task of turning it around becomes a lot harder for him.
May 18th, 2007
ken
Couldn’t agree more floss – i think anyone who can’t answer 95% of the questions should be taken outside and shot – end of water and lungfish crisis.
May 18th, 2007
Dave Bath
If Australian Values were so important, perhaps they should be outlined in a pre-amble to the constitution. But that would increase the scope for High Court oversight (sorry “activism”) on legislation and regs, so I don’t expect it to happen anytime soon.
May 18th, 2007
joe2
5. Australia’s political system is a …
a)Parliamentary democracy
b)Monarchy
c)Dictatorship
d)Socialist state
How could anyone answer a) with a straight face, without thinking that it is closer to c) or b)?
May 18th, 2007
Guy
Not to mention it would take approximately 0.3 seconds for the answers to these questions to be published on the Internet for all prospective visa applicants to read and memorise the answers for.
May 18th, 2007
al loomis
if you subscribe to the idea that politicians should run australia as their personal farm, why get upset when they do? if you think they should do what you want them to do, why should they? they’re in power, you’re not.
the australian democrat party should understand the theory and and practice of democracy, but they don’t. little wonder that sam and sally civilian imagine that choosing between bandit gang ‘a’ and bandit gang ‘b’ every few years makes them citizens of a democracy- it doesn’t.
May 19th, 2007
wmmbb
I wish to endorse what others have said.
The test designers should have been tested to confirm that they were of the mainstream for the test to have validity, but if they were not, like the Prime Minister, that would not preclude them from been representative of Australian values, broadly defined. For example,Quakers, Catholics, and the Exclusive Brethen, are all supposedly Christian, whatever the significant different of their beliefs and practices.
“The correct answer is (b)”. Perhaps in the limited, and confused, minds of the test designers and their political directors. There is no reason, for example, why Islamic values could not be Australian values, especially in the light of the history of the debt that Western Civilization owes to Islamic Civilization and other civilizations. The history of mathematics provides illustrations.
If the majority, or a significant proportion, of Australians could not pass this test then ipso facto it is not a true test of Australian values, which presupposes there is such an independent concept as “Australian values”, other than Australian Aboriginal values. Coconut has made this clear.
More to the point such a test is rank hypocrisy. When did this government apply Christian values to refugees, for example. The parable of the Good Samaritan comes to mind.
And then as Joe2 points out there are questions of fact.
There is no need for this test, which appears to be positively counter-productive.
May 19th, 2007
Adele
To add to the misleading content of question 15, the preceeding question is
14. Which of the following are Australian values?
a. Men and women are equal
b. `A fair go’
c. Mateship
d. All of the above
Assuming the answer is (d), it gives the lie to the supposed answer to the following question.
Leaving aside the conceit that a fair go or sexual equality are somehow “Australian values”, rather than shared values of a multitude of other nations and cultures, since when was the value of equality between men and women part of the judeo-christian tradition, or Catholic or Islamic tradition for that matter?
Plenty of Christian religions only allow men to hold the most powerful roles. And in as much as this has partially broken down in the last century or so, it has been due to the influence securalism and enlightenment values.
May 19th, 2007
Fleeced
For the Australian values question, I selected “(d) secularism”, and was quite annoyed to see it was the wrong answer. In many ways, their answer is right, in that the values were heavily influenced by this culture… but this question is just plain wrong.
This whole thing is such a waste of money.
May 19th, 2007
red crab
citizenship test,
workchoices,
bullys in the schools,
invasion buy unions,
what next?
hope we dont get fooled like last time.
May 19th, 2007
muzzmonster
I wonder what will happen to those one long-term visa (presumably lots of students and pommies on gap years) who do not respect the Australian way of life? Will there be a 1800 number I can dob hem in to and get them deported or at least sent to Woomera detention centre.
And can we also do that with our own citizens who don’t respect the Australian way of life. It would be so much easier than going through the tedious process of trials.
May 20th, 2007
Rob
I would normally try to reply with some sort of satirical humour but am too aghast to think in that vein. $126m!! Why not just post what you want to say on a web-site (which we can democratically add to net-nanny to protect our children from group-think) instead of killing all those trees and giving mates in publishing cushy contracts.
May 20th, 2007
doctor victor kacala
i agree with the general THRUST [i.e., up yours john COWARD :=: jC.] of the above comments.
i give a more general outline at:
lister.itk.ntnu.no/pipermail/she_forum/2007/000040.html
May 23rd, 2007
Evil Pundit
Why do you hate Australia?
Jun 1st, 2007
Ralph
Australians have every right to define the qualifications for membership in and even admission into their community. It is the key to preserving a unified national identity.
In order to maintain a strong and cohesive nation-state, a nation’s citizenry must be comprised of people who share a common history, who share the same culture and key values, and who see themselves as differentiated from the rest of the world by their membership of that community. Hence, those applying for Australian citizenship should in the very least have a decent understanding of Australian history, culture, traditions and institutions.
The problem here in Australia is that we have undervalued our citizenship for far too long. Even with Howard’s cosmetic changes, Australian citizenship is still ridiculously easy to obtain compared to that of other Western countries.
Jun 4th, 2007
dr victor kacala
dear ralph, first u must define all the key terms u use in your broad over view of what it means to be a citizen [in oz in this case].
the key terms that u should define are: “right”, “qualifications”, “member ship”. there are a number of logical errors in your views e.g., the first says ‘we’, ALL australians have a right…
groups can not define any thing – an i or u can define some thing by example or in a tech sense of the word. who checks the criteria for “membership” as a citizen? what makes u think that a “unified national identity” is a good thing? in fact, u cannot DEFINE this operation of “unification”.
u go on to say oz must be “comprised of people who share a common…” set of VALUES. i have a very serious problem with this notion of value. what if an oz person does NOT share u version of value e.g., greed is god & capitalism is the best way to get there?
while what u say ‘sounds’ good, it has no basis. we cannot define a ‘national identity’ of ANY country or group. i think that “fair go & have a go ya’ mug” is sensible. what does it mean to be fair?
to be fair means to have a practical sense of ‘fair’ play in all social exchange in all aspects of your life. in this sense i suggest that the BASIC oz value should be to know what it means to be just in all your actions. of course, it helps if u & i have pos attitude. is the oz system of governance [the rules of the 'game' at all levels of society] fair?
no.
our eco systems are grossly unfair.
it is for this reason i have written a book called “literacy & numeracy in buiness ethics” for all primary school kids – since justice is a good idea for ANY nation, state, family or person, it is a GLOBAL system of justice.
i have also given a TECH system of software that allows all countries to BUILD fair systems of exchange for inter & intra state trade.
as it turns out, greed has a habit of cutting out any innovation along the lines i have given.
Jun 13th, 2007
dr victor kacala
dear “evil” pundit, if u refer to me, i do NOT hate any country, person or group. i HATE the lack of just or fair actions by people in power in oz. further, our pollies KNOW their actions are unjust e.g., downer & hicks * habib.
i HATE his [ & john coward] lack of action [even if hicks & habib are 'terrorists', which i doubt].
{i HATE the actions & in-action of gwb & lobby groups & corruption & all that has been lost in the USA i.e., people in power KNOW that they are being unjust.
this is a permanent stain on ALL USA, now & for a long time to come. at least hitler BELIEVED what he was doing was right. gwb knows this is not the case – he & cronies & groupies KNEW it was about greed, under the shroud of security, with appeals to a basic idea of REVENGE.}
i do not think they & most of the lib/nat have a soul worth saving – i can even hear it in their pathetic little utterances.
what happened to standing up for the ‘little’ guy/gal? where is that sense of outrage at in-justice that i was told was a hall mark of being an anzac? i think our media & pollies have lost their soul AND i do NOT want to be part of this social system.
i would prefer to starve in cuba or similar.
further, i think that the people in power & the gross acts by our pollies, at all levels AND the lack of action/imagination of our high courts, means that i do not think this country=oz is worth supporting at all.
further, most oz people seem to have been socially conditioned [like a pack of lab rats] to think big is better, more is nearer god, winners are grinners etc…
our gurus [e.g., academics] are not capable of getting off their high horse & allow them selves to think: “maybe i got it wrong?”. this is esp’ true in religions & social sciences. what i am saying, i do NOT want to live in oz. i am sure u will find ample refugees from greed, in any number of countries, based on the western tradition of imperialism/racis/sexism/etC…
Jun 13th, 2007
Dave Bath
I understood you asked for the Citizenship Testing bill to be referred to committee. Good work. I’m trying to put a few thoughts together to see if I can come up with a submission (search my blog for “Citizenship Testing” if you’re interested), because the bill seems to allow the minister enormous scope for abuse. Off topic: are windows of opportunity for public submissions to senate inquiries getting smaller?
Jun 19th, 2007
Andrew Bartlett
Thanks Dave
Generally speaking, the length of time Senate Committees have to do their work (i.e. hear from the public, examine the issues, formulate opinions and recommendations, etc) has been shrinking dramatically. This Inquiry is actually a bit longer than the average these days.
For anyone interested in the Inquiry into the citizenship test Bill, go to this link.
Jun 19th, 2007
CORAL
I thought the answer to Question 15 would be D, but I think there would be better answers that aren’t listed.
I believe in equality – not Adam and Eve philosophy.
They say The Lord’s Prayer in parliament. What a farce!
I think all new arrivals to this country should have English lessons (both written and spoken), unless they are already fluent/competent. I wouldn’t wait for them to apply for citizenship to insist on this, as it is an essential skill.
Jun 20th, 2007